Posted on 06/11/2006 6:55:04 PM PDT by blam
Search for India's ancient city
Roman amphora pieces abound in Pattanam
Archaeologists working on India's south-west coast believe they may have solved the mystery of the location of a major port which was key to trade between India and the Roman Empire - Muziris, in the modern-day state of Kerala.
For many years, people have been in search of the almost mythical port, known as Vanchi to locals.
Much-recorded in Roman times, Muziris was a major centre for trade between Rome and southern India - but appeared to have simply disappeared.
Now, however, an investigation by two archaeologists - KP Shajan and V Selvakumar - has placed the ancient port as having existed where the small town of Pattanam now stands, on India's south-west Malabar coast.
Key evidence
Pattanam is the only site in the region to produce architectural features and material contemporary to the period.
"No other site in India has yielded this much archaeological evidence," said Dr Roberta Tomba, of the British Museum.
"We knew it was very important, and we knew if we could find it, there should be Roman and other Western artefacts there - but we hadn't been able to locate it on the ground."
Muziris is located on a river, distant from Tindis - by river and sea, 500 stadia; and by river from the shore, 20 stadia
Roman description of the location of Muziris Until recently, the best guesses for the location of Muziris centred on the mouth of the Periyar river, at a place called Kodungallor - but now the evidence suggests a smaller town nearby, Pattanam, is the real location.
Drs Shajan and Selvakumar now meet locals on a regular basis as they continue their work, with some older people in particular remembering picking up glass beads and pottery after heavy rains.
Undoubtedly, they told Discovery, the many pieces of amphora are from the Mediterranean - a key to establishing Pattanam as the place where Muziris once stood.
"These amphora are so common," Dr Shajan said.
"We have hundreds of shards of Mediterranean pottery."
Mystery disappearance
Muziris became important because of the Romans' interest in trading, and their desire to have contact with regions beyond the reach of conquest and set up trading routes with these places.
"India had a long fascination for the Romans, going back to Alexander the Great," Dr Tomba said.
Glass and precious stones are key finds in the site area "Alexander was a huge model for succeeding Roman emperors, and the fact that he had been in India and brought back tales of the fantastic things, the people and products there, heightened the Roman desire to continue that association."
What is known, from a 1st Century document, is that the harbour was "exceptionally important for trade."
Clues to its location are provided in ancient Indian texts. Professor Rajan Gerta, from Mahatma Gandhi University in Kerala, said that there are many references to "ships coming with gold, and going back with 'black gold'" - pepper.
"These ships went back with a whole lot of pepper and various aromatic spices, collected from the forests," he added.
Merchants from a number of different cultures are believed to have operated in the port, and there are numerous Indian finds from the time as well as Roman ones.
In 1983, a large hoard of Roman coins was found at a site around six miles from Pattanam.
However, even if Muziris has been found, one mystery remains - how it disappeared so completely in the first place.
Dr Tomba said that it has always been presumed that the flow of the trade between Rome and India lasted between the 1st Century BC through to the end of the 1st Century AD, but that there is growing evidence that this trade continued much longer, into the 6th and early 7th Century - although not necessarily continually.
"We're not quite clear how long it went on in Muziris, and the more evidence we can gather from the artefacts, the clearer the picture that will build up," she added.
"What is interesting is that in the 6th Century, a Greek writer, writing about the Indian Ocean, wrote that the Malabar coast was still a thriving centre for the export of pepper - but he doesn't mention Muziris."
GGG Ping.
what were romans outsourcing
Cosmas is famous for insisting that the earth is flat, against the "pagan" notion that it is spherical. Thomas Friedman seems to have picked up the idea lately, to judge from his book The Earth is Flat (I haven't looked at it to see what arguments he uses...probably different from Cosmas').
Of course Roman's outsourced. They came up with selling captives from their battles, rather than killing them, and their small farmers were driven from the market by competition. Later, the fields of Egypt provided wheat for lower prices than could be obtained even with slave labor, so the Romans went from local to imported grain.
Crassus figured out a way to make money: he got a franchise for the fire department, and had his slaves negotiate the price for the house as it was on fire, until it was cheap enough that the owner would have to pay rent to live in what had been his own building. The rule was: only put out fires when they threaten a building that belongs to Crassus!
His end was fitting. After his death at Carhae, the Partians poured molten gold down his throat. Thus was his avarice sated.
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"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
At Empire's Edge:[at] Qusier al-Qadim, from the first and second centuries A.D... were inscribed with Tamil graffiti in the Brahmi script and likely came from Arikamedu in southern India (not far from the modern town of Pondicherry). These constitute the first Indian Tamil inscriptions ever found in Egypt, and their discovery, next to a small iron forge, raises the possibility that a small community of Indian merchants or metalworkers lived at Qusier al-Qadim... researchers found items typical of the east, for example, teak and cloth made from jute. [pp 82-83]
Exploring Rome's Egyptian Frontier
by Robert B. Jackson
Pliny the Elder also added a warning: "The subject is one well worthy of our notice, seeing that in no year does India drain us of less than 550,000,000 sesterces giving back her own wares, which are sold among us at fully 100 percent their first cost." Romans were not the only ones to comment on the nature of their trade with India. A Tamil poem from the second or third century A.D. includes the following passage: "The beautiful vessels, the masterpieces of the Yavanas [Westerners], stir white foam on the Periyar, river of Kerala, arriving with gold and departing with pepper." Despite the discovery in southern India of some six thousand silver denarii and gold aurei, which seems to corroborate these statements, scholars disagree about whether such an economic imbalance actually occurred. Certainly the Romans spent vast sums of money on Asian luxuries, but they might also have used a barter system. Roman amphora, pottery, glass, lamps, and other items have been excavated in India, Sri Lanka, and Arabia, and Roman beads (gold or silver, set in glass) have been uncovered in the Rufiji Delta of Tanzania... In addition, the Greek/Egyptian author of Periplus Maris Erythraei (Circumnavigation of the Red Sea) identifies specific places where bartering was or was not possible. [pp 88-89]Roman period maritime artefactsDozens of classical wrecks excavated in the Mediterranean have produced a clear development of hull construction although little is preserved of their rigging. With no wrecks excavated in the Erythraean Sea the vehicles of the Roman trade are not represented in the archaeological record. Papyrological records detailing receipts and trading activity on the Nile mention Greek vessels called hellenikon, large river vessels which sailed the Nile (Lewis 1983: 143; Bagnall 1983: 35). These records give some detail of the rig, which may have been utilised on the Red Sea, this includes linen sails, ‘rings’ and blocks. As ancient sources suggest (Herodotus 2.36) Egyptian type vessels were quite different from specifically sea-going vessels, although a range of technologies may have been utilised by the Romans. However there is no published archaeological evidence for the type of craft referred to as ‘the good vessels, masterpieces of the Yavanas (westerners)’ (Sidebotham 1986: 23) mentioned in the c. 150 AD Tamil poetry of the Kauliliya Arthasastra. This referred to the arrival of Yavanas to the Malbar coast port of Muziris.
Univ of Southampton
2001Rome's East India CompanyA sturdy 100-foot-long Roman trading vessel bound for India foundered off the Red Sea port of Quseir, Egypt. The ship settled 200 feet below the surface, where it remained undisturbed until a group of British and American archaeologists discovered it in 1993. Douglas Haldane believes the ship was part of a fleet sent by the Roman emperor Augustus -- who seized control of Egypt after the naval battle of Actium in 31 B.C. -- to control trade in the Indian Ocean. He predicts that gold, silver and other precious metals used as currency will be found on board, as well as wine from the Campania region of southern Italy.
[Field Notes]Arts of the Silk RoadsA mirror from India with an ivory handle carved in the shape of a female fertility deity was buried under volcanic ash at Pompeii in 79 CE. Among the first images of Buddhist deities in human form were those carved in the province of Gandhara (present-day Pakistan) in the 2nd century CE. Unlike anthropomorphic Buddhist images carved farther south in India, these Gandharan figures, which were based on provincial Roman models, wear heavy, toga-like robes and have wavy hair. The figural tradition of Buddhist art spread through Central and East Asia and also to Southeast Asia, taking on local and regional characteristics.
by John Major
Asia SocietyIndia And The Roman EmpireFine muslins, jewels, especially beryls and pearls, drugs, spices and condiments from India were in great demand. The volume of trade was, therefore, increased to an unprecedented extent. The sea-borne trade between India and Rome received great impetus in the reign of Emperor Claudius by Hippalaus' discovery, in 45 A.D., of the existence of the monsoon winds, blowing regularly across the Indian Ocean. According to Pliny nearly L 5,50,000 flowed every year from Rome to India to pay for the balance of trade. This statement is borne out by the huge hoards of Roman coins unearthed in Indian soil in Tamilnadu.
Kinda loose definition of a Roman....
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Hershel Shanks, the editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, has recently published findings indicating that Jews living in the Roman Empire in 79 AD when the southwestern Italian city of Pompeii was destroyed by a massive eruption of the Mount Vesuvius volcano, believed that it was Divine retribution for the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Roman general Titus nine years earlier. Citing archeological evidence in a paper entitled "The Destruction of Pompeii -- God's revenge?" in the July/August edition of the magazine, Shanks told the Jerusalem Post that Book 4 of the Sibylline Oracles, an ancient mystical text, includes a passage which says in part; "When a firebrand, turned away from a cleft in the earth [Vesuvius] In the land of Italy, reaches to broad heaven It will burn many cities and destroy men. Much smoking ashes will fill the great sky And showers will fall from heaven like red earth. Know then the wrath of the heavenly God." He also points to ancient graffiti scrawled on the walls near Pompeii which includes references to "Sodom and Gomorra." The eruption of Vesuvius "attacked the core of Roman society," Shanks concluded. "There's very good reason to conclude there was a perceived connection and in the eyes of some, God was clearly at work."
Jews saw Pompeii as retribution for destruction of the Temple
YouTube: Evidence of Christianity in First Century Pompeii
In 1939, Italian archeologist Prof Maiuri, discovered an artifact in the ruins of ancient Pompeii, that had a very Indian origin. This ivory statuette which survived the disaster and lasted all these 2000 years was identified by Prof Maiuri as that of the Goddess Lakshmi and dated to around 1AD. It has since then been quoted as the ‘Goddess Lakshmi statue in Pompeii' in many books & articles... in terms of iconography and technique, the closest comparisons can be made with ivory figurines recovered from the central and northwestern parts of the sub-continent and datable to the 1st century A.D. Two of these examples were found at the sites of Bhokardan and Ter in central India and a third was excavated in Begram, Afghanistan along with a large cache of ivory, bone, glass, and metal objects. Although these four figurines are not perfect matches, their shared iconographic and compositional features suggest that they may have been produced in the same region (probably central India) before being distributed to other regions. This small, rare sculpture, found in a modest dwelling in Pompeii, represents nonetheless an important indication of a trade relations that existed already by the 1st century A.D. between the Roman Empire and India.
Goddess Lakshmi statue in Pompeii | The Mysterious India | 2015-03-19
Goddess Lakshmi statue in Pompeii | The Mysterious India | 2015-03-19
Roman gold coins excavated in Pudukottai India
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