A Historical Summary Of The Ancient Commerce In Precious Stones

(via Roman Book On Precious Stones: 1950) Sydney H Ball writes:

Arabia’s trade with India was doomed when Hippalus in 47 A.D solved the riddle of the monsoons. Roman trade with India sprang up overnight and the luxuries of India found their way to Europe by the Red Sea, increasing tremendously the supply of precious stones available to Romans. Soon Indians were seen in Alexandria and Roman citizens of non-Latin blood, Greek, Jews, and Egyptians settled in the ports of India.

Egypt in predynastic days (prior to 3400 B.C) had commercial contacts with the Sinai Peninsula and with the Mesopotamian valley, and certainly by 2900 B.C with the Syrian coast, Crete, and the Sudan. Trade was pushed southward, and by 2750 B.C Egypt was trading with Punt (Somaliland ?). In the XIIth Dynasty (about 2000 B.C), her interest in overseas products increased and she probably had her command Arabian products and even, conceivably, some of those of India. In the XVIIIth Dynasty (1580-1350 B.C), her commerce further expanded. Phoenician merchants were permitted to establish factories at Memphis and the wealth of Asia Minor, the Near East, northeastern Africa, and the Greek isles were hers. A few carnelians and garnets from India probably filtered into Egypt via Arabia a thousand years before Christ. Sapphires, zircons, and the other more valuable Indian stones, however, reached Egypt only in the time of the Hellenistic Ptolemies. Ptolemy Philadelphus (300-246 B.C) sent one Dionysius to southern India to open up commercial relations with that country. Agatharchides (181-146 B.C) states that in his time Egypt’s trade with India was very profitable. Strabo states that about 170 B.C a shipwrecked Indian sailor, half starved and exhausted, was cast upon the shores of the Red Sea. Nursed back to health, he promised to show the way to the Orient and Ptolemy Euergetes II, then ruler of Egypt, sent several merchants with him to India. Among them was a Greek, Eudoxus of Cyzicus, (he made two trips to India, 120 B.C and 113-2 B.C) who after trading his Egyptian merchandise for spices and precious stones, gives us one of the earliest descriptions of Indian gem mining: “Some of the Indian collect from amongst the pebbles of the river, others they dig out of the earth where they have been formed by the moisture as crystals are formed with us.’ It is stated that his rich cargo of spices and precious stones was seized on his return by Ptolemy Euergetes II, who had a monopoly on eastern trade. Alexandria was an important emporium of Indian goods, largely obtained (probably up to about 100 B.C) from the Sabaeans and later direct via the Red Sea ports of Berenice and Myoshormos.

Hecataeus of Miletus, the father of geography (about 520 B.C) is the first European to mention India, although Homer knew tin by its Sanskrit name. According to Herodotus, India (about 570 B.C) paid tribute Persia in gold, and in the campaign of 512 B.C Persian troops annexed large areas of the Punjab and the Sind. In 510 B.C Scylax of Caryanda, a Greek in Darius employ, descended on the Indus, crossed the Indian Ocean, and finally reached Persia. Intercourse between India and the more westerly civilizations was becoming a reality. Herodotus, however, (about 443 B.C) who traveled widely among the Persians, then in commercial touch with India, does not mention the precious stones of India and these, doubtless hoarded by the Hindu rulers, must have rarely reached Persia in his day.

In 479 B.C, when the Greeks defeated the Persian General Mardonius, plunder rendered them luxury conscious. Later the Greeks probably obtained some gems from India through the Persians and the Sabaeans, and rumors of India’s wealth in spices and precious stones may have led Greek merchants thither before Alexander the Great’s time (356-323 B.C). Indeed, some Indian spices were common in Greece in the time of Hippocrates, the great physician (460-357 B.C). We know that Alexander promised his soldiers plunder, as a result of his Indian campaign, which would dwarf the spoils of Persia. Soldiers were to fill with pearls, ivory, gold and precious stones, not only their own homes, but those of all Greece. As a result of the Macedonian’s conquest, the dispersal of the wealth of Persia and India, the accumulation of centuries of hoarding, stimulated world trade enormously. It should be emphasized that Alexander the Great’s routes passed close to the turquoise locality of Nishapur, Persia (first mentioned, so far as I know, by Amur-ru-Lais—from 878 to 903 A.D ruler of Khorasan—but probably worked much earlier), the Badakshan lapis lazuli locality (probably known to the Sumerians); the Badakshan ruby mines (mentioned by Istakhri 951 A.D, but probably known considerably earlier), and the Khotan nephrite deposits (known certainly in the reign of Wu Ti, 140-87 B.C, and perhaps 2500 years earlier).

The road to the East was open, not to be closed in classical times. Fine eastern garnets, sards, amethysts, beryl, topaz, and sapphire became known to the Greeks, and the more precious stones first appeared commonly in Greek jewelry. Ctesias (415-397 B.C) knew of the Indian agate mines and states that Assyria in his time obtained from India sard and onyx for her finer seals.

In support of his assertions, sard and sardonyx first appeared in the Mesopotamian valley in Assyrian times. He also mentions the gem pantarba, which attracts to itself sealstones and has many other marvelous properties. Unfortunately, I cannot identify it.

Seleucus Nicator, ruler of Syria, in 305 led an army into India even further than had his predecessor, Alexander the Great. About 20 B.C, according to Florus, ambassadors from southern India came to the court of Augustus with gifts of precious stones and pearls. In the next six years two other embassies arrived. Again, under Constantine (306-337 A.D), ambassadors from India arrived with shining gifts.

Roman-Indian commerce in spices, gems, and fine textiles was highly developed by Pliny’s time, the first, in money value, being the most important of the three. It is described in detail in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (60 A.D +/-). Most Indian gems arrived in Rome either via Alexandria, by one of the Arabian towns, or by one of the Parthian cities. Yearly, in July, 120 ships sailed from Myoshormos on the Red Sea, later from nearby Berenice. Taking advantage of the monsoons, in about seventy days the boats reached ports on the Malabar coast. Here they undoubtedly met with other ships which went east from that coast and from Ceylon, presumably as far as China. After loading, the Roman vessels returned to Egypt at the year’s end. The cargo was then transported by camel from the Red Sea to the Nile and down it to Alexandria. A fleet carrying gems sailed yearly, under the Empire, from Alexandria to Puteoli (modern Pozzuuoli) near Rome.

Contact with oriental luxury caused the Romans to overindulge in costly stuffs and in the use of jewels; for when they enjoyed the mastery of the Indian trade, the Romans had the wealth to indulge in their tastes, no matter how fantastic or extravagant they might be. The fact that false stones were less common in Rome in the second than they were in the first half of the 1st century A.D was due to the influx of fine gems into Rome from India after the secret of the monsoon was known. Practically every known Indian gem was in use in Pliny’s time but the prices demanded for them were exorbitant. The stones, besides the first cost and export and import duties, had to stand heavy transport charges, and the Roman gem merchant in setting a price had to consider not only his own overhead, but the great risk of shipwreck or piracy which he or his agents had been subjected to in bringing the stones from India. Profits, provided the fleet arrived safely, were enormous, for Pliny tells us that these eastern luxuries were sold at fully one hundred times their original cost. Not only the Indian merchants, but those of all intermediate commercial centers, hid the source of the gems sold to the Romans and exaggerated the dangers of mining them, in part to restrict competition and in part to enhance their value. In consequence, many trade centers became, in the eyes of the ancients, the source of precious stones. Thus, according to the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, through the Indian port of Barbaricum, on the delta of the Indus, both Persian turquoise and Afghanistan lapis lazuli were shipped, in the 1st century of our era, to Rome. A fairly complete list of gems imported can gotten by the Roman tariff law of the time.

A Historical Summary Of The Ancient Commerce In Precious Stones (continued)