Place · Red Sea port · Egypt
Berenike
The Ptolemaic and Roman port on the Egyptian Red Sea coast from which ships left for India on the south-west monsoon, and where excavation has found black pepper by the sackful, Indian teak reused in construction, and pottery scratched with Tamil-Brahmi names.
- Function
- Trade & production
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 23.911, 35.475
Worth knowing
One storage jar carries the Tamil-Brahmi name Korra, a chieftain's title; another reads Kanan. These are not traded objects but working marks made by people, which is why Berenike is treated as evidence of a resident Tamil community rather than of goods changing hands.
Connections (3)
- Trade routeKeeladi
Excavation at Berenike on the Egyptian Red Sea coast has turned up black pepper by the sackful, Indian teak reused in building, and storage jars scratched with Tamil-Brahmi names — Korra, Kanan. These are working marks made by people rather than traded goods, which is why Berenike is read as evidence of a resident Tamil community in Egypt. The graffiti-marked sherds at Keeladi on the Vaigai belong to the same writing tradition at the other end of the route.
- Maritime routeMuziris / Pattanam
Ships left Berenike in July on the south-west monsoon and made the Malabar coast in about forty days, returning in December or January on the north-east. Berenike's excavated black pepper, teak and Tamil-Brahmi graffiti and Muziris's amphorae and Roman coin are the two ends of the same voyage, four thousand kilometres apart.
- In the same set asMyos Hormos / Quseir al-Qadim
The two Egyptian Red Sea ports where the Indian end of the monsoon trade is physically legible. Both Myos Hormos at Quseir al-Qadim and Berenike further south have produced potsherds inscribed in Tamil-Brahmi — personal names scratched by owners onto storage jars — along with Indian pepper, teak, rice and coconut. Strabo says a hundred and twenty ships a year left for India from Myos Hormos under Augustus. The sherds are the difference between knowing the trade existed and knowing that Tamil-speaking people were standing on that quay.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Berenice Troglodytica”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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