11 ms·

A buried ancient Egyptian port reveals connections between distant civilizations

247 points by NoRagrets 2y ago

contingencies 2y ago
History is fascinating. It's fairly common knowledge in academia there are sites in East Africa derived from Buddhist use with Indic names. The article touches on south-west subcontinental trading ports, mentioning Pattanam just north of modern Kochi in Kerala. I traveled there in 2011 (shortly after accidentally experiencing the start of the Arab Spring revolution in Tunisia!) when we were starting Kraken, and with a background in ancient Chinese history and many years in China, I was impressed to see many active cantilevered fishing structures erected in bamboo[0]: just the same as you can see today in some parts of China. There's also a theory that the monk who introduced Kung Fu in China was actually teaching an established martial art from this same region of Kerala (of course this is not entertained in China for political reasons, it makes a lot of sense). Most of Southeast Asia owes heavy cultural debts to southern Indian seafaring, as typified by the Borobodur bas-relief boat carving showing outriggers associated with southern India ("katthu-maram" = "two sticks tied together" = catamaran = technology which powered Austronesian seafaring)[1]. Incidentally, the very name China itself was asserted by a prominent historian to be possibly derived from an Indic name for a tribal confederation in Yunnan/Guizhou/Guangxi, Yelang.[2] [0] https://www.outlooktraveller.com/experiences/heritage/chinese-fishing-nets-kochi https://www.outlooktraveller.com/experiences/heritage/chines... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borobudur_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borobudur_ship [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinas
DiscourseFan 2y ago
There are two words in Hindi today, Kohl and Kajaal, which refer to black makeup, often made with lead, worn under the eyes. If you look for the etymology of Kohl, you'll find that it is from Akkadian[0]. The Sanskrit word, from where the Hindi word is descended, shares the exact same meaning as the Akkadian word[1], and they sound almost the same. How is this possible, if not for a connection between Bronze Age Indic and Near Eastern cultures? It is quite probable that the modern categories by which we divide religions, nations, cultures, people, are all flawed when brought into relief as this article does. Social interchange is far more complex than 19th century definitions of national identity. [0]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gu%E1%B8%ABlum#Akkadian https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gu%E1%B8%ABlum#Akkadian [1]https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/apte_query.py?qs=kajjalam&matchtype=default https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/apte_query.py?qs=kajja...
rituraj_tiwari 2y ago
Well written article. I was surprised by the lengths the author went to avoiding the use of the word Hindu. Those "Indic" deities are Hindu gods. The "undeniably Buddhist" reference to universal happiness is also likely the Hindu Upanishad chant of "सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः". Anyone have insights on what would motivate an otherwise well informed author to do that?
- Bayart 2y ago
  Indic doesn't make assumptions about religious boundaries and is not ideologically loaded while maintaining the association to the context of India.
  - rituraj_tiwari 2y ago
    That would make sense for items of ambiguous religious affiliation. For things that are unambiguously Hindu, though?
jelliclesfarm 2y ago
[flagged]
imperfect_light 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
blackhaz 2y ago
Incredible article.
thom 2y ago
Raoul McLaughlin in The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean estimates that customs taxes on trade through Red Sea ports could have accounted for fully _one third_ of all Roman income in the first century AD. It’s always been fascinating to me what might have happened if Rome tried to play tall instead of wide.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  Totally.- PS. That, and antibiotics ...
- thom 2y ago
  The book seems to be available at: https://www.ancientportsantiques.com/wp-content/uploads/Documents/PLACES/IndOc-Gulf/IndianOcean-McLaughlin2014.pdf https://www.ancientportsantiques.com/wp-content/uploads/Docu...
- teleforce 2y ago
  >Its value, after payment of the Roman Empire’s 25 percent import tax, was nearly seven million sesterces, which scholars have calculated was easily enough to buy a luxury estate in central Italy, or, if you prefer, to pay 40,000 stonecutters for a year. That translates into some vast fortunes. Aparrently this value from one ship, and it's reported to have 100 ships per monsoon season to Indian Ocean, it means per year since you need to have two monsoon for departing and returning. This report is for the first century AD, before the trade route reached its peak.
  - detourdog 2y ago
    What I love about this perspective is that one can imagine production plans based on catching the monsoon season. The Indian ocean is also no joke to sail through anytime much less monsoon season. This took sophisticated thought and cultural focus to pull off.
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      And calendars, I am sure.-
loufe 2y ago
Truly great article, and surprisingly lives up entirely to the very click-bait sounding title. The writer has a great mix of anecdotes, facts, and images. I feel like we don't often hear about times where these civilizations and religions mingled and worked together. The Isis temple would have been something to see.
- loufe 2y ago
  Fun fact, if anyone else noticed the spelling of pottery "sherds" and thought it was a typo for "shards", apparently it's an alternatively spelling favoured in archeological circles.
  - ganzuul 2y ago
    Oh, that explains it in Minecraft.
    - pests 2y ago
      Yep, they got renamed a few months ago in-game and now many many more people know what sherds are.
- bumbledraven 2y ago
  Agreed. I was impressed by the amount of interesting info and the well-written delivery. I found the bio of the author, Jo Marchant, on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00B9DBJ3E/about https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00B9DBJ3E/about): > [Marchant] has a PhD in genetics and medical microbiology from St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College in London, and an MSc in Science Communication from Imperial College London. She previously worked as a senior editor at New Scientist and at Nature, and her articles have appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian and Smithsonian magazine.
ganzuul 2y ago
> He became friendly with the local tribespeople, who showed him ruins that archaeologists didn’t know existed. “They’ll take you to places—the last Westerner was some Roman guy,” he jokes. Makes you really stop and think.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  I guess one good thing about being an archeologist must be that history is added one year per year. You get to a ruin which has been messed up by Roman archaeologists, and their stuff is also artifacts. You get to a ruin messed up by Indiana Jones’s in the 1940’s or whatever, just note the location, your great^10 grandkids can come back and collect his hat as an artifact.
  - Bayart 2y ago
    > You get to a ruin which has been messed up by Roman archaeologists, and their stuff is also artifacts. In the case of Egypt, the chief culprits are usually ancient Egyptians. Not just common thiefs mind you, but also officials from later dynasties using grave goods as their treasury.
- BurningFrog 2y ago
  I've seen similar stories from South America. Some archeologist in Northern Argentina happened to talk to a local farmer who knew about several ancient sites.
  - arminiusreturns 2y ago
    Growing up in Native American territory, there is much known by locals they don't share, and many sites are known but kept secret and sacred.
    - BiteCode_dev 2y ago
      We feel the same about mushroom spots in France. There is a saying: during the german occupation, people betrayed friends, and nation, but they shut their mouths about the mushroom spots.
dr_dshiv 2y ago
Hidden in temple basements across India are manuscripts, undeciphered, some of which speak to this ancient era. Preserve them before they rot! Archaeological and historical preservation in India needs attention and resources.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Is there reason to believe they’re going to rot if they haven’t after 2,000 years already?
  - apetersson 2y ago
    Humidity
    - jelliclesfarm 2y ago
      How manuscripts used to be preserved : https://drperumal.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/indigenous-methods-of-conservation/ https://drperumal.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/indigenous-method... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03400352221103899 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03400352221103... I have been to a few museums and libraries where the palmyra manuscripts and texts are still preserved. They should remain with people who value them instead of handing them over to the govt. In our home library, we lost so many books where the pages were so brittle that they would break like biscuits. But the religious palm leaf scripts that have been in the family for generations were well preserved as they were wrapped in cloth. We also had some inscriptions on copper plates or some other kind of alloy metal. They were at the altar in the prayer room and kept submerged in water always. I don’t know what language it was but it was none of the known modern languages. Even today., in the deep south, there are palm leaf astrologers whose lineage have owned Nadi astrology palm leaf manuscripts that is supposed to relate everything about you life and past lives including when you will visit the astrologer. There are some authentic lineages. The text is written in Vatteluttu and script knowledge is passed down lineages only https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatteluttu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatteluttu Nadi astrology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadi_astrology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadi_astrology
oriettaxx 2y ago
military air force base just there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ras_Banas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ras_Banas
empath75 2y ago
While a lot of these finds are new and wonderful, especially that sanskrit inscription, the connections between the civilizations weren't exactly hidden. There are references to Hindus and Buddhists sprinkled throughout Greek histories, there were Greco-Buddhist kingdoms in what's now Afghanistan, Ashoka sent missionaries with his Buddhist edicts far west and had them translated into Greek and Aramaic. I think the development of Christianity and later Greek philosophy has _clear_ signs of influence from Buddhism, and I'm sure the influence was bidirectional. These people talked to each other and they argued with each other and learned from each other. Egypt in particular was a wildly religiously inventive melting pot, and the Hermetic and Gnostic texts _especially_ have signs of influence from eastern religion, and if there were active Buddhist communities in Berineke that were presumably proselytizing, that makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of people sort of make the assumption that because there are core differences between the religions that there is no influence, but sometimes doctrines only become settled through opposition. It's not always "Yes, and", sometimes it's "yes, but", and the popularity of certain ideas (for example the idea of salvation through personal enlightment) could force various sects to adapt and find similarities, while also differentiating themselves. Christianity is obviously not buddhism or an offshoot of Buddhism, but that doesn't mean that aspects of it weren't a reaction to encounters with Buddhist ideas.
- pegasus 2y ago
  Very true. For example, Buddha literally made it into Christian tradition, as Saint Josaphat of India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barlaam_and_Josaphat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barlaam_and_Josaphat
- christkv 2y ago
  There was even an Indian Greek kingdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Greek_Kingdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Greek_Kingdom
- Bluestein 2y ago
  > Ashoka sent missionaries with his Buddhist edicts far west and had them translated into Greek and Aramaic Smart guy.-
- 2y ago
vardhanw 2y ago
Seems like the fact of a large India-Egypt trade link via the red sea was known atleast a year back, and specifically this evidence from Berenike. This [0] link describes the author William Dalrymple talking about it and also about his book [1] which is already out, which presumably covers this in more detail. A lot of Indian scholars are (re)discovering Indic history and we can expect much more of ancient India specific history to come out, which was unknown or has been forgotten over the ages, given the ancient nature of the Indian civilization. [0] https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/economy/story/indias-ancient-trade-route-more-important-than-silk-road-ever-was-william-dalrymple-hails-india-middle-east-europe-economic-corridor-398382-2023-09-14 https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/economy/story/indias-anc... [1] https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Road-Ancient-India-Transformed-ebook/dp/B0CWCS47P9 https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Road-Ancient-India-Transformed...
- reidacdc 2y ago
  Slightly OT, but if you are interested in this sort of thing, William Dalrymple and Anita Anand co-host the Empire podcast, which has many episodes and guests and recommended reading covering lots of ancient history. I'm not affiliated with it, I'm just a fan. https://www.goalhangerpodcasts.com/empire https://www.goalhangerpodcasts.com/empire
- trompetenaccoun 2y ago
  Another month, another article falsely claiming that these trade routes haven't been known for years. It's also not limited to India-Egypt. The Greeks traded with Ancient Ethiopia. As did the Romans, who also traded with India and even as far as China. That sea route through the Arabian Gulf has been well established for millennia.
- zozbot234 2y ago
  > A lot of Indian scholars are (re)discovering Indic history and we can expect much more of ancient India specific history to come out, which was unknown or has been forgotten over the ages, given the ancient nature of the Indian civilization. This, there are also very real links connecting famous civilizations of the Ancient Near East such as the Sumerians with the Dravidians of South India.
jagged-chisel 2y ago
() replaces “between” Which shorthand is this?
- jagged-chisel 2y ago
  The title changed and this comment makes no sense. The title was "...reveals connections () distant civilizations" where the word 'between' was replaced with '()'
cut3 2y ago
Photos of the buddha that was discussed in the article and not shown: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berenike_Buddha https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berenike_Buddha
- gradientsrneat 2y ago
  The picture is in the article, but nice to know there's a Wikipedia page.
- complaintdept 2y ago
  Somewhat relevant, Greco-Roman Buddhas from the same period: htps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhist_art
Ozzie_osman 2y ago
Not directly related, but that whole area of the Red Sea in southern Egypt is gorgeous (Berenike aka Berenice, Marsa Allam, etc). Far away from the more crowded spots of Egypt. Scuba diving that in my opinion rivals or exceeds the Great Barrier Reef. Great for kitesurfing as well.
- hawk_ 2y ago
  How safe is it given the politics of the place?
ErigmolCt 2y ago
Wow! The extent and sophistication of ancient trade routes
more_corn 2y ago
Oh, port. Not portal. Never mind.
checker659 2y ago
Travelling with the Ancients by Dr. Shailendra Bhandare : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grtom6O4jv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grtom6O4jv8

247 points by NoRagrets 2y ago

History is fascinating. It's fairly common knowledge in academia there are sites in East Africa derived from Buddhist use with Indic names. The article touches on south-west subcontinental trading ports, mentioning Pattanam just north of modern Kochi in Kerala. I traveled there in 2011 (shortly after accidentally experiencing the start of the Arab Spring revolution in Tunisia!) when we were starting Kraken, and with a background in ancient Chinese history and many years in China, I was impressed to see many active cantilevered fishing structures erected in bamboo[0]: just the same as you can see today in some parts of China. There's also a theory that the monk who introduced Kung Fu in China was actually teaching an established martial art from this same region of Kerala (of course this is not entertained in China for political reasons, it makes a lot of sense). Most of Southeast Asia owes heavy cultural debts to southern Indian seafaring, as typified by the Borobodur bas-relief boat carving showing outriggers associated with southern India ("katthu-maram" = "two sticks tied together" = catamaran = technology which powered Austronesian seafaring)[1]. Incidentally, the very name China itself was asserted by a prominent historian to be possibly derived from an Indic name for a tribal confederation in Yunnan/Guizhou/Guangxi, Yelang.[2] [0] https://www.outlooktraveller.com/experiences/heritage/chinese-fishing-nets-kochi https://www.outlooktraveller.com/experiences/heritage/chines... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borobudur_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borobudur_ship [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinas

DiscourseFan 2y ago

There are two words in Hindi today, Kohl and Kajaal, which refer to black makeup, often made with lead, worn under the eyes. If you look for the etymology of Kohl, you'll find that it is from Akkadian[0]. The Sanskrit word, from where the Hindi word is descended, shares the exact same meaning as the Akkadian word[1], and they sound almost the same. How is this possible, if not for a connection between Bronze Age Indic and Near Eastern cultures? It is quite probable that the modern categories by which we divide religions, nations, cultures, people, are all flawed when brought into relief as this article does. Social interchange is far more complex than 19th century definitions of national identity. [0]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gu%E1%B8%ABlum#Akkadian https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gu%E1%B8%ABlum#Akkadian [1]https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/apte_query.py?qs=kajjalam&matchtype=default https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/apte_query.py?qs=kajja...

rituraj_tiwari 2y ago

Well written article. I was surprised by the lengths the author went to avoiding the use of the word Hindu. Those "Indic" deities are Hindu gods. The "undeniably Buddhist" reference to universal happiness is also likely the Hindu Upanishad chant of "सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः". Anyone have insights on what would motivate an otherwise well informed author to do that?

Bayart 2y ago
Indic doesn't make assumptions about religious boundaries and is not ideologically loaded while maintaining the association to the context of India.
- rituraj_tiwari 2y ago
  That would make sense for items of ambiguous religious affiliation. For things that are unambiguously Hindu, though?

jelliclesfarm 2y ago

[flagged]

imperfect_light 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

blackhaz 2y ago

Incredible article.

thom 2y ago

Raoul McLaughlin in The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean estimates that customs taxes on trade through Red Sea ports could have accounted for fully _one third_ of all Roman income in the first century AD. It’s always been fascinating to me what might have happened if Rome tried to play tall instead of wide.

Bluestein 2y ago
Totally.- PS. That, and antibiotics ...
thom 2y ago
The book seems to be available at: https://www.ancientportsantiques.com/wp-content/uploads/Documents/PLACES/IndOc-Gulf/IndianOcean-McLaughlin2014.pdf https://www.ancientportsantiques.com/wp-content/uploads/Docu...
teleforce 2y ago
>Its value, after payment of the Roman Empire’s 25 percent import tax, was nearly seven million sesterces, which scholars have calculated was easily enough to buy a luxury estate in central Italy, or, if you prefer, to pay 40,000 stonecutters for a year. That translates into some vast fortunes. Aparrently this value from one ship, and it's reported to have 100 ships per monsoon season to Indian Ocean, it means per year since you need to have two monsoon for departing and returning. This report is for the first century AD, before the trade route reached its peak.
- detourdog 2y ago
  What I love about this perspective is that one can imagine production plans based on catching the monsoon season. The Indian ocean is also no joke to sail through anytime much less monsoon season. This took sophisticated thought and cultural focus to pull off.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    And calendars, I am sure.-

loufe 2y ago

Truly great article, and surprisingly lives up entirely to the very click-bait sounding title. The writer has a great mix of anecdotes, facts, and images. I feel like we don't often hear about times where these civilizations and religions mingled and worked together. The Isis temple would have been something to see.

loufe 2y ago
Fun fact, if anyone else noticed the spelling of pottery "sherds" and thought it was a typo for "shards", apparently it's an alternatively spelling favoured in archeological circles.
- ganzuul 2y ago
  Oh, that explains it in Minecraft.
  - pests 2y ago
    Yep, they got renamed a few months ago in-game and now many many more people know what sherds are.
bumbledraven 2y ago
Agreed. I was impressed by the amount of interesting info and the well-written delivery. I found the bio of the author, Jo Marchant, on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00B9DBJ3E/about https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00B9DBJ3E/about): > [Marchant] has a PhD in genetics and medical microbiology from St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College in London, and an MSc in Science Communication from Imperial College London. She previously worked as a senior editor at New Scientist and at Nature, and her articles have appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian and Smithsonian magazine.

ganzuul 2y ago

> He became friendly with the local tribespeople, who showed him ruins that archaeologists didn’t know existed. “They’ll take you to places—the last Westerner was some Roman guy,” he jokes. Makes you really stop and think.

bee_rider 2y ago
I guess one good thing about being an archeologist must be that history is added one year per year. You get to a ruin which has been messed up by Roman archaeologists, and their stuff is also artifacts. You get to a ruin messed up by Indiana Jones’s in the 1940’s or whatever, just note the location, your great^10 grandkids can come back and collect his hat as an artifact.
- Bayart 2y ago
  > You get to a ruin which has been messed up by Roman archaeologists, and their stuff is also artifacts. In the case of Egypt, the chief culprits are usually ancient Egyptians. Not just common thiefs mind you, but also officials from later dynasties using grave goods as their treasury.
BurningFrog 2y ago
I've seen similar stories from South America. Some archeologist in Northern Argentina happened to talk to a local farmer who knew about several ancient sites.
- arminiusreturns 2y ago
  Growing up in Native American territory, there is much known by locals they don't share, and many sites are known but kept secret and sacred.
  - BiteCode_dev 2y ago
    We feel the same about mushroom spots in France. There is a saying: during the german occupation, people betrayed friends, and nation, but they shut their mouths about the mushroom spots.

dr_dshiv 2y ago

Hidden in temple basements across India are manuscripts, undeciphered, some of which speak to this ancient era. Preserve them before they rot! Archaeological and historical preservation in India needs attention and resources.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ceejayoz 2y ago
Is there reason to believe they’re going to rot if they haven’t after 2,000 years already?
- apetersson 2y ago
  Humidity
  - jelliclesfarm 2y ago
    How manuscripts used to be preserved : https://drperumal.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/indigenous-methods-of-conservation/ https://drperumal.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/indigenous-method... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03400352221103899 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03400352221103... I have been to a few museums and libraries where the palmyra manuscripts and texts are still preserved. They should remain with people who value them instead of handing them over to the govt. In our home library, we lost so many books where the pages were so brittle that they would break like biscuits. But the religious palm leaf scripts that have been in the family for generations were well preserved as they were wrapped in cloth. We also had some inscriptions on copper plates or some other kind of alloy metal. They were at the altar in the prayer room and kept submerged in water always. I don’t know what language it was but it was none of the known modern languages. Even today., in the deep south, there are palm leaf astrologers whose lineage have owned Nadi astrology palm leaf manuscripts that is supposed to relate everything about you life and past lives including when you will visit the astrologer. There are some authentic lineages. The text is written in Vatteluttu and script knowledge is passed down lineages only https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatteluttu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatteluttu Nadi astrology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadi_astrology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadi_astrology

oriettaxx 2y ago

military air force base just there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ras_Banas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ras_Banas

empath75 2y ago

While a lot of these finds are new and wonderful, especially that sanskrit inscription, the connections between the civilizations weren't exactly hidden. There are references to Hindus and Buddhists sprinkled throughout Greek histories, there were Greco-Buddhist kingdoms in what's now Afghanistan, Ashoka sent missionaries with his Buddhist edicts far west and had them translated into Greek and Aramaic. I think the development of Christianity and later Greek philosophy has _clear_ signs of influence from Buddhism, and I'm sure the influence was bidirectional. These people talked to each other and they argued with each other and learned from each other. Egypt in particular was a wildly religiously inventive melting pot, and the Hermetic and Gnostic texts _especially_ have signs of influence from eastern religion, and if there were active Buddhist communities in Berineke that were presumably proselytizing, that makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of people sort of make the assumption that because there are core differences between the religions that there is no influence, but sometimes doctrines only become settled through opposition. It's not always "Yes, and", sometimes it's "yes, but", and the popularity of certain ideas (for example the idea of salvation through personal enlightment) could force various sects to adapt and find similarities, while also differentiating themselves. Christianity is obviously not buddhism or an offshoot of Buddhism, but that doesn't mean that aspects of it weren't a reaction to encounters with Buddhist ideas.

pegasus 2y ago
Very true. For example, Buddha literally made it into Christian tradition, as Saint Josaphat of India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barlaam_and_Josaphat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barlaam_and_Josaphat
christkv 2y ago
There was even an Indian Greek kingdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Greek_Kingdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Greek_Kingdom
Bluestein 2y ago
> Ashoka sent missionaries with his Buddhist edicts far west and had them translated into Greek and Aramaic Smart guy.-
2y ago

vardhanw 2y ago

Seems like the fact of a large India-Egypt trade link via the red sea was known atleast a year back, and specifically this evidence from Berenike. This [0] link describes the author William Dalrymple talking about it and also about his book [1] which is already out, which presumably covers this in more detail. A lot of Indian scholars are (re)discovering Indic history and we can expect much more of ancient India specific history to come out, which was unknown or has been forgotten over the ages, given the ancient nature of the Indian civilization. [0] https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/economy/story/indias-ancient-trade-route-more-important-than-silk-road-ever-was-william-dalrymple-hails-india-middle-east-europe-economic-corridor-398382-2023-09-14 https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/economy/story/indias-anc... [1] https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Road-Ancient-India-Transformed-ebook/dp/B0CWCS47P9 https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Road-Ancient-India-Transformed...

reidacdc 2y ago
Slightly OT, but if you are interested in this sort of thing, William Dalrymple and Anita Anand co-host the Empire podcast, which has many episodes and guests and recommended reading covering lots of ancient history. I'm not affiliated with it, I'm just a fan. https://www.goalhangerpodcasts.com/empire https://www.goalhangerpodcasts.com/empire
trompetenaccoun 2y ago
Another month, another article falsely claiming that these trade routes haven't been known for years. It's also not limited to India-Egypt. The Greeks traded with Ancient Ethiopia. As did the Romans, who also traded with India and even as far as China. That sea route through the Arabian Gulf has been well established for millennia.
zozbot234 2y ago
> A lot of Indian scholars are (re)discovering Indic history and we can expect much more of ancient India specific history to come out, which was unknown or has been forgotten over the ages, given the ancient nature of the Indian civilization. This, there are also very real links connecting famous civilizations of the Ancient Near East such as the Sumerians with the Dravidians of South India.

jagged-chisel 2y ago

() replaces “between” Which shorthand is this?

jagged-chisel 2y ago
The title changed and this comment makes no sense. The title was "...reveals connections () distant civilizations" where the word 'between' was replaced with '()'

cut3 2y ago

Photos of the buddha that was discussed in the article and not shown: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berenike_Buddha https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berenike_Buddha

gradientsrneat 2y ago
The picture is in the article, but nice to know there's a Wikipedia page.
complaintdept 2y ago
Somewhat relevant, Greco-Roman Buddhas from the same period: htps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhist_art

Ozzie_osman 2y ago

Not directly related, but that whole area of the Red Sea in southern Egypt is gorgeous (Berenike aka Berenice, Marsa Allam, etc). Far away from the more crowded spots of Egypt. Scuba diving that in my opinion rivals or exceeds the Great Barrier Reef. Great for kitesurfing as well.

hawk_ 2y ago
How safe is it given the politics of the place?

ErigmolCt 2y ago

Wow! The extent and sophistication of ancient trade routes

more_corn 2y ago

Oh, port. Not portal. Never mind.

checker659 2y ago

Travelling with the Ancients by Dr. Shailendra Bhandare : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grtom6O4jv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grtom6O4jv8