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Muyser has pointed out that the Arabic text bears all the indications of a translation from the Coptic, and that the Scala copte 44 identifies “Aidhab” with Berenike. According to the text of the Synaxarion, Bishop Nabis was born in a village near Coptos and became a monk at an early age. Bishop Nabis did not reside in “Aidhab” but in a small church at Coptos. When it was necessary for the bishop to go there himself, the Beja, a tribe that lived in Nubia and the Eastern Desert in Upper Egypt, carried him and the church ornaments on their camels, receiving a price for the hire of their beasts. The life of Pesynthios also records that Patriarch Theophilus (385–412) consecrated John, the younger brother of Pesynthios, as bishop of the diocese of Hermonthi.

The month in Jewish lunar calendars usually began when the new moon crescent was first sighted, as evident from Philo, Josephus, and other literary and epigraphic sources (e.g. the Berenike inscriptions—rabbinic sources are dealt with in the next chapter). From the fourth century c.e., however, some Jewish calendars appear to have begun the month on the day of conjunction (thus about two days earlier), as evident from the document of the Council of Sardica, the Catania inscription, and the ketubah of Antinoopolis. These calendars were not empirically determined, but based on fixed, calculated schemes. Diversity of practice appears to have persisted, nevertheless, until the end of antiquity (as evident, for instance, from the Zoar inscriptions).

This chapter reviews the settlements in Ampelome, Arsinoe/Kleopatris, Arsinoe near Deire, Arsinoe Trogodytika, Berenike Epi Dires, Berenike Ezion Geber, Berenike near Sabai, Berenike Panchrysos, Berenike Trogodytika, Dioskorides, Kleopatris, Klysma, Leuke Kome, Leukos Limen, Myos Hormos, Nechesia, Philotera, and Ptolemais Theron. Berenike was located on the western shore of the Red Sea, near the Bab el-Mandeb. Klysma was an important naval station in late antiquity and the early Byzantine period. Myos Hormos had a large port with a “curved entrance”; offshore were three islands. It was also the chief port for trade with Africa and India. Ptolemais was founded for the purpose of hunting elephants in the nearby hunting grounds.

This chapter focuses on the role of transport in trade. Beginning with the Eastern Desert, using the evidence of archives, it considers the nature and status of transporters, and the nature of their involvement in the supply of Berenike and Myos Hormos, the ports of the Red Sea. It considers the role of transport in the trade of luxuries with India and the East, and argues for a dynamic and complex economy. In the Western Desert, communication with the Nile Valley along established routes was of considerable importance, both for supply and for trade. Caravans of camels, some of considerable size, traversed these routes. The evidence of customs receipts is deployed to analyse patterns of trade and consumption in the Fayum. Finally, the supply of food and other commodities to the cities of Egypt is considered.

This chapter describes the settlements in Apollonia, Arsinoe Taucheira, Berenike Euesperides, Kainopolis, and Ptolemais Barke. A group of terra-cotta figurines found at Apollonia has been tentatively dated to the first half of the fourth century B.C. Arsinoe was located 40 kilometers southwest of Ptolemais and 69 kilometers northeast of Berenike at the site of the modern oasis of Tocra. There are two references—both post-Hellenistic—to Kainopolis in Cyrenaica in the extant sources: Ptolemy and the Tabula Peutingeriana. Ptolemais had been wealthy and populous in ancient times; in time, however, the city became almost deserted because of the lack of water. Ptolemais was located on the Mediterranean coast at the site of the modern village of Tolmeta, approximately 100 kilometers east of Benghazi.

Berenike, a port on Egypt's Red Sea coast, is the ideal microcosm to study in order to come to grips with ancient “Old World” commerce and its impact on those who participated in it. The Maritime Spice Route was the southern land-cummaritime counterpart of the central Asian Silk Road. Berenike played an important role in the vibrant Old World global economy that bound west with east and south with north, both by sea and by land. There were a number of ports on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea that bore the sobriquet Berenike. The one examined here was named after the queen of Ptolemy I Soter, who established the Ptolemaic dynasty, and the mother of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, founder of this important Red Sea emporium.

The location of Berenike provided avenues of trade, communication, and conveyance of basic resources to and from the port, but also posed barriers to reaching it. Examination of ancient authors shows how desiccated the region was in Roman times. There were three basic resources critical to the city's residents: food and water for inhabitants and livestock, and for provisioning the ships; and timber/wood for limited construction and ship repair. Wood, and animal dung, would also have been used as fuel for fires, both industrial and domestic. A number of ancient authors reported on Berenike and the city's contacts with other areas of the ancient world, ranging from the second century B.C.E. into the sixth century C.E., are presented. Fieldwork at Berenike between 1994 and 2001 and briefly in 2009–2010 only about 2% of the surface of the site and much less than that of its depth was excavated.

Ptolemaic strata excavated at Berenike produced archaeological evidence that corroborates and adds to information preserved in ancient literary sources. The segment of an elephant tooth is evidence for live pachyderms in the city. The “discovery” of the monsoons and their exploitation by “western” sailors drastically reduced travel times and costs between Red Sea ports in Egypt and the Indian subcontinent for Ptolemaic and later Roman ships when they were in the Indian Ocean. Ptolemies' trade in ivory helped to defray expenses entailed in elephant acquisition, transportation, and training. Elephant and ivory acquisition was well organized on a large scale by the reign of Philadelphus. Berenike was clearly the preferred landfall, although on occasion elephants might be disembarked at more northerly ports for a host of practical or other reasons. Furthermore, Romans were fascinated with and curious about elephants.

Excavations at Berenike revealed something about the size, layout, and building methods and materials used to create the port's infrastructure and how these changed over the life of the city. The architecture and materials used to construct Berenike must have been partially a reflection of the ethnic building conventions of the residents. The only other early Roman structures discovered at Berenike, aside from walls associated with the courtyard of the Serapis temple, and the Ptolemaic and perhaps early Roman harbor works south of the Ptolemaic industrial area, are two seawalls at the eastern edge of the site. It is not clear why the major unfortified settlements and cemeteries in the environs of Berenike are late Roman in date whereas the ten forts/praesidia ringing the city from the hilltop fort at Shenshef southwest of the emporium to that in Wadi Lahma/Lahami northwest of the port are overwhelmingly of early Roman foundation.

This chapter investigates those who lived in Berenike in the Roman period, their professions, religious practices, and the languages they wrote and spoke. It examines how the foods they consumed were indications of their ethnicity and social status. People of different regions, ethnic backgrounds, and socioeconomic statuses sought their fortunes in Roman Berenike. Different languages found at Berenike in early Roman times provide important clues to the multicultural composition of its demography. Meat, Red Sea fish, turtle, dugong, mollusks, wheat, and fruit and nuts were some of the food consumed in Berenike. Water was the major resource required to sustain life in the town. An important religious structure in Berenike was the Serapis temple. The Shrine of the Palmyrenes was built of a hodgepodge of fossilized coral heads mixed with gypsum/anhydrite blocks. Early Roman Berenike served as an important administrative center for the Prefect of Mount Berenike.

There was indication of ancient ship dimensions from wrecks excavated in the Mediterranean and northern Europe dating from the fourth century B.C.E. to the seventh century C.E., and these can be used to estimate the sizes of their Red Sea contemporaries. Ships sailing the Red Sea in the Roman era would have had two basic functions: military and commercial. The Koptos Tariff refers to the transport of a ship's mast to the Red Sea coast from the Nile. Ships built in the west and arriving in India would have required some repairs, maintenance, and replacement of damaged or missing parts. The Ptolemaic industrial area is the only quarter of Berenike where Ptolemaic remains were not covered by Roman-occupation layers. The basalt ballast found on the surface of the harbor at Berenike can date to no earlier than the first century B.C.E.

After the annexation of Egypt in 30 B.C.E. Berenike became an important player in a series of interconnected local, regional, and wider-ranging trade and communication systems within and beyond the Roman Empire. Much bulk trade conducted to and from the urban centers of Rome was either within close proximity by land or over some greater distance by sea. Major caravan players in the eastern Roman Empire were Petra and Palmyra, and these players and similar desert oasis settlements prospered primarily. Land and water transport often complemented one another and should not be viewed solely as competitive. Seasons and weather greatly affected transport costs. The Mediterranean basin's contacts with Arabia, India, and points east and south were fairly circumscribed and sporadic until the Roman Empire had expanded to include all of coastal Mediterranean North Africa and large portions of the Middle East.

Evidence for Berenike's commercial contacts in the Roman period is far better than for the Ptolemaic. There are two major sources of information about items traded at or passing through Berenike in Roman times. Literary can be combined with archaeological evidence to establish which regions Berenike did business with and attempt to identify which ports Berenike most likely had as trading partners. The most noteworthy import to Berenike was black pepper. Items excavated at Berenike that came from India or the Indian Ocean basin include sorghum, rice, coconuts, mung beans, Indian gooseberry, sesame seeds, Nile catfish bones, escargot, Job's tear, rosary peas, frankincense, and myrrh. The presence of Roman coins in India does not necessarily indicate any balance-of-trade deficit, nor does it invariably signal that merchandise was purchased in every case. Finally, examples of cultural transmission are described.

Excavations recorded pottery and a few coins dating from about the middle of the third century, indicating that Berenike had not been completely abandoned at that time. The size of the buildings and the layout of the streets provide some idea of the function of different parts of the community. Berenike offers a unique opportunity to study cult practices of the late Roman period. Analysis of many ecofacts and artifacts excavated at Berenike indicates a robust trade with other areas of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Many objects reflective of long-distance maritime commerce for a large import market or for personal use by residents appear in late Roman contexts at Berenike. There was no single cause for the port's demise; rather, its end was likely due to a combination of factors. Berenike was not overwhelmed by some sudden catastrophe but died a slow and natural death.

This chapter discusses how four major Roman roads crossed the Eastern Desert to link the Red Sea with the Nile Valley, and carried the wealth of India and Africa from Red Sea ports to the great emporium at Coptos. The exact course of the Via Hadriana was unmapped until June 1996, when two American researchers succeeded in tracing its route from the Nile Valley to the Red Sea coast. Long before the arrival of the Romans and for centuries after their departure, the scenic Myos Hormos Road between the Red Sea and the Nile served as a vital artery through the Eastern Desert. Researchers began examining the Marsa Nakkari–Edfu route only recently, and little definitive information is available. Although the existence of the Berenike–Coptos road has been known to modern scholars for many years, it has only recently been thoroughly explored and surveyed.

Readers must draw their own conclusions as to whether Eeyore’s assessment that ‘That Accounts for a Good Deal’ is valid regarding what they have read thus far and whether they agree that the statement of a Tswana informant consulted by Martha Geiger and Alice Hovorka—‘Donkeys made me who I am today’—captures an important truth about their overall significance in human history. This final chapter summarizes my own thoughts on the matter. It starts by identifying the key themes that run through the donkey’s tale, the millennialong association between people and donkeys and mules. Can we recognize durable or recurring sets of connections, either practical or symbolic? Are consistencies discernible across time and space, independent of cultural context, perhaps because of biological and behavioural propensities that all mules and donkeys may share? What kind of worlds, in short, did the donkey make? One theme that undoubtedly warrants attention is the widespread demotion in the donkey’s status following the adoption and spread of other riding animals— horses and camels—across much of the Old World. How far does this in fact permit, or encourage, us to use donkeys to write a history of the subaltern, of the oppressed, something that archaeology still often neglects? Whether the framework of interspecies relations within which donkeys have existed—and still exist—truly permits us to write a history of the donkey (rather than of donkeys and people), let alone a donkey’s history of the worlds the two have shared, also demands consideration. In turn, this requires us to think carefully about how active the donkey has been in the creation of those worlds. Responding to these points connects as much with the status and recognition we are prepared to extend to Equus asinus as it does with framing the questions by which to continue investigating our shared past. People domesticated donkeys some 7,000 or more years ago somewhere in northeastern Africa, most likely because of the assistance they could offer in supporting a mobile pastoralist way of life by reducing the costs of moving personal possessions, children, the infirm, and perhaps even young animals.

In this chapter I examine evidence for the reuse of textiles in the Roman world. Two principal sources of evidence will be considered: archaeology, and the written record. Typical of the archaeological evidence are the rags from rubbish deposits at Berenike, a Roman port on the Red Sea coast of Egypt, and (at the opposite corner of the Empire) from ditches and occupation layers in the fort of Vindolanda close to Hadrian’s Wall. Survival of textiles, it need hardly be emphasized, is wholly dependent on climatic and microclimatic conditions, leading to a skewed distribution pattern across the ancient world. I suggest that the life cycle of a textile comprises six phases: manufacture, primary use, maintenance, primary reuse, secondary reuse, and discard. Romans may appear to display an ingrained ‘make-do-and-mend’ attitude, although such a mindset seems to be at variance with the consumerism which scholars have detected in some Roman contexts. The whole topic manifestly deserves closer scrutiny in the future.

This chapter looks at the archaeological evidence from several regions for the continuation of Indo-Roman trade during the second century ad. The emphasis here is on the Egyptian evidence, but this chapter also looks briefly at India and Parthia/Palmyra. From India, second-century Roman finds—particularly coins—are outlined, as is the role of Palmyra as middleman to Rome. Although numbers of Roman finds in India are reduced during the second century, two diverse categories of evidence point to the continued importance of this trade: the large value attached to the shipment discussed in the Muziris papyrus, and the continued importance of the Red Sea ports, especially Myos Hormos. The large second-century ceramic assemblages from Myos Hormos suggest that throughout the second century it was more active than Berenike. By the end of the second century trade became more complex with the involvement of the Palmyrenes.

This chapter considers the financial scale of Indo-Roman trade via the Red Sea, comparing the large sums mentioned by Pliny with the evidence of customs dues, ostraca from the Red Sea port of Berenike, and hoards of Roman coins found in India. Analysis of the finds of Roman coins in India by value rather than number over time suggests that, contrary to prevailing opinion, there was not a major diminution in the value of the trade after the reign of Tiberius. Although there was apparently some decline in the Flavian period, the face value of coin finds recovers in the second century until the reign of Antoninus Pius. Coins for export to India were specially selected for their higher precious metal content, and older issues with a higher silver content continued to be exported to India long after they had largely ceased to circulate within the Roman Mediterranean.