Text · Greek sailing manual · Egypt
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
Also known as Periplus Maris Erythraei, Periplus, Periplous of the Erythraean Sea
A first-century Greek sailing manual written by an anonymous merchant of Roman Egypt, listing every port from the Red Sea to the Ganges with its harbour, its rulers, what sells there and what to bring. It is the single most important document for Indian Ocean trade before the Arab geographers.
- Date
- 40–70
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Qualified / contested
Worth knowing
It names Muziris, Nelkynda, Barygaza, Kalliena and Poduke, gives the pilotage for crossing the bar at Bharuch, and warns that the king of Kalliena has closed the port. Much of Indian coastal archaeology is an attempt to match excavated sites to its place-names.
The identification of its place-names with modern sites is in several cases unresolved; Muziris, Nelkynda and Poduke are all argued over.
Connections (2)
- Canonised by textMuziris / Pattanam
The Periplus gives Muziris a paragraph: the pepper, the great ships from Arabia and Greece, the river, the distance from Tyndis. Pliny adds that it was not a desirable port because of pirates nearby. Those two passages are why a mound at Pattanam is excavated and argued over, and why the repository can put a Roman trade port on the Kerala coast at all.
- Canonised by textBharuch (Barygaza)
The Periplus describes Barygaza in more practical detail than any other Indian port: the gulf's dangerous tides, the royal fishermen sent out with long boats to tow ships over the shoals, the market for Italian wine and the demand for silver plate and slave musicians at the court inland. It is a working pilot's account, not a geography.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Periplus of the Erythraean Sea”. Lionel Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text with Introduction, Translation and Commentary (1989).
Open Periplus of the Erythraean Sea in the repository →