In considering Egypt and her relations to the Mediterranean, a distinction in approach may be made: her direct neighbors—Libya, Palestine, and coastal Syria—could be reached overland without the necessity to build and master seagoing ships.8 These areas are in a similar league to Nubia, which is well connected via land routes but also by means of river boats. Interestingly, overland activities in the northern Sinai area and the southern Levant are not attested for all periods (see later discussion), and finding out about the possible reasons for it provides an area of further research.
Whether contacts to places further afield, such as central Africa, northern Syria, and further inland toward Mesopotamia as well as to the Aegean, Cyprus, and Anatolia, were conducted directly or via intermediaries remains unclear for most of the Bronze Age.9
A number of foreign sites abroad seems to have had a special relationship to Egypt from very early in their history, and these relationships lasted for long periods. Byblos in particular stood in close contacts with Egypt from the Old Kingdom onward.10 In the Middle Kingdom, the rulers of Byblos were referred to by means of Egyptian administrative titles.11 The site remained important as part of the political network of the Late Bronze Age (Amarna correspondence).12 “Hathor, mistress of Byblos” appears in texts, and, in the New Kingdom, a temple was erected for her.13
The eastern part of the Mediterranean was particularly favorable to the formation of maritime contacts due to the combinations of winds, currents, and general topography. Without those preconditions, the relations between those areas would not have developed in the way they did. They play a major role, which cannot be stressed enough.14
Relations with Crete and the Greek mainland should probably be seen quite differently because the access and possible direct influence by ship or via intermediaries was probably not as impressive and threatening as an overland campaign with thousands of soldiers. For the Old Kingdom, there is no proof for direct contact between Egypt and Crete.15 When maritime activity by means of seagoing vessels in the Levant and along the coast began is also not very clear, but it is assumed to have started already in the Early Bronze Age,16 and it is indirectly indicated in the 4th Dynasty on the Palermo Stone.17 However, a maritime military expedition to the southern Levant is attested by Weni in the reign of Pepy I of the 6th Dynasty.18 In addition, due to the fact that the toponyms of the Aegean islands are not identified beyond dispute, textual references remain often ambiguous.19
Interestingly, Cyprus, contrary to the modern view, belonged to “Asia” (Setjet) at least in the Middle Kingdom, according to the Memphite inscription of Amenemhet II if, indeed, the identification of I3sy with Alashia is correct.20 Thus, imported archaeological material found in these respective places affords additional evidence for interaction of some kind, but it remains difficult to provide unequivocal proof for direct contact or clarification of the circumstances of its arrival.21
Late Bronze Age Maritime Trade in The Eastern Mediterranean: An Inland Levantine Perspective ABSTRACT This paper emphasizes the nature of trade relations in the Eastern Mediterranean in general and from a Levantine inland perspective in particular. The ‘maritime’ trade relation of the ancient city of Hazor, located in the interior of LB Canaan is a case study investigating the Mycenaean and Cypriot pottery on the site. The influx of these vessels peaked during LB IIA. The distribution and types of this pottery at Hazor point to four interested groups that wanted it. These were the royal and religious elites; the people in Area F; the religious functionaries of the Lower City; and the craftsmen of Area C. The abundance of imports in Area F, among other evidence, indicates that this area might have contained a trading quarter from where the imports were distributed to other interested groups. A model of ‘interregional interaction networks’, which is a modified world systems approach, is used to describe the organization of trade connections between the Levant, Cyprus and the Aegean and even beyond. The contents of the Ulu Burun and Cape Gelidonya ships, wrecked on the coast of south Turkey, show that luxury items were traded from afar through Canaan via the coastal cities overseas to the Aegean. Such long-distance trade with luxury goods requires professional traders familiar with the risks and security measures along the routes and with the knowledge of value systems and languages of diverse societies. These traders established networks along main trade routes and settled in trading quarters in particular node cities. The paper suggests that Hazor, as one of the largest cities in Canaan, located along the main trade routes, possessed such a node position. In this trade the Levantine coastal cities of Sarepta, Abu Hawam, Akko and possibly Tel Nami seem to have played important roles. These main ports of southern Syria and northern Palestine were all accessible to Hazor, although some of them in different periods of LB.
(Very) Long Distant Trade – Egyptian, Mesopotamia and Denmark in the Late Bronze Age Early glass was a rare and expensive luxury that was traded along the coasts of the Mediterranean between Egypt, the Near East and Mycenaean Greece in ships like the Uluburun shipwreck, excavated off the coast of Turkey, dating to the late 13th Century BCE. But new scientific methods make it possible to determine the origins of Egyptian and Mesopotamian glass beads (almost 300 in total) found in Danish graves more than 5000 kilometers from the glass workshops and dating to the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE. As a result, Denmark can be proposed as the most distant area that received such beads, revealing links with the trade systems of the distant Mediterranean...
The Egyptian origin of the two Danish glass beads is confirmed by the composition of their colorant: in both beads, cobalt correlates with nickel, zinc, and manganese. This correlation has been shown to be typical of the cobalt colorant extracted from Egyptian alum deposits such as those at the Kharga and Dakhla oases. The overall composition of these glasses appears also very similar to the Egyptian glass found at the Uluburun wreck from New Kingdom workshops at Malkata and el-Amarna...
The answer may be found along the 7300 kilometer-long shoreline of Denmark, where it is possible to find large quantities of Baltic amber – the ‘gold’ of the north. Amber was another material of high value, and like glass provides evidence for long distance exchange and ancient routes of contact. Today, most of the Bronze Age amber found in the Mediterranean that has been scientifically determined has turned out to be succinate, the ‘Baltic amber’ recovered from the coasts of the Baltic Sea, here including the South Swedish coasts of Scania and Danish Jutland, along with the northwest German Frisian coast on the North Sea. Amber was highly valued in the Mediterranean, and has turned up in Syria and probably Egypt, and may very well be the key to understanding the trade through Europe 1500-1200 BCEE. Splendid Late Bronze Age examples of the most distant finds of Nordic amber are provided in Syria by the ‘Qatna Lion,’ a small lion-shaped amber cup, probably locally produced from a large lump of amber. Perhaps even the beads and scarabs that were found in the tomb of Tutankhamen were of Nordic amber...
Egyptian beads found in Danish grave
European trade sites
The Route of Lapis Lazuli: Lapis Lazuli Trade From Afghanistan to Egypt During Mid-Late Bronze Age Abstract. Lapis lazuli, as a luxury prevailing in the Middle East and the Near East, has long-distance trade across Asia and Africa. This trade was influenced profoundly by both the geographical environment and the political situation along the way. Therefore the study of lapis lazuli trade has great significance in the interpretation of the trans-regional history at the same time. Based on the related geographical environment as well as the political environment and viewed from the perspective of trade routes and means of exchange, this article will aim at the study of lapis lazuli trade from Afghanistan to Egypt during mid-late Bronze Age from the level of history.
Were there World-Systems during the Bronze Age? The birth of the state in regions benefiting from particular geographical and demographic assets (such as Mesopotamia, Susiana, Egypt, and later the Indus and China) was a period during which a partial break occurred from the mode of accumulation inscribed in kinship relationships. Public and private accumulation of capital appeared, along with a new ideology, techniques of power (Mann 1986) – with writing, and the blossoming of institutions linked to the religious sphere – and new forms of labor mobilization, implying tributes and taxes, and servile or hired labor. The birth of the state was accompanied by a spectacular expansion of exchange networks, with exchanges not only of goods, but also of knowledge, beliefs, and values. How can one explain the concentration of wealth in and around certain poles of development – compared with much less or none in other regions – as well as the variations observed in time and space? The systemic paradigm can provide us with a convincing viewpoint on the data collected for the Bronze Age and Iron Age periods, by taking all interactions at the global, regional, and local levels into account.1 A worldsystem approach can help us to recognize and understand five phenomena: 1. the emergence and evolution of an interregional division of labor in certain areas, over the longue durée; 2. the connections between events in distant regions, and between the regions themselves; 3. the existence of cycles, both economic and political, in the same areas; 4. shifts in power between competing centers; and 5. changing inequalities, with the processes of both domination and co-evolution set in motion by the system and by local expansions: 2 the growth of the cores favored the blossoming of semi-peripheries, with some peripheries able to benefit from the dynamics of the system. Different world-systems can be identified, in western Asia and in northern Africa on the one side, and in East Asia on the other. Increasing exchanges would connect these systems to one another, over time.
China’s World-Systems and Contacts with the West The connections between western Asia and the Nile Valley probably played a role in Egypt’s development as a core of a world-system. Mesopotamia, Iran, and Turkmenistan also had indirect contacts with complex societies of the Chinese world as early as the fourth and third millennia. In East Asia, these contacts helped accelerate the transformation of chiefdoms into states; they also led to the transmission of domesticated plants and animals, and to the introduction of copper and bronze metallurgy into the Qijia culture (Gansu, Qinghai), through routes of the Tarim and the valleys of the southern Altai. The Qijia culture was in contact with the first Chinese kingdoms (Taosi, Wangchenggang, Guchengzhai), where copper and bronze were present (see Map I.17). In the Yangtze River valley, the development of more intensive rice cultivation during the third millennium coincided with the rise of hierarchical societies which were themselves in contact with the northern plains. Influences from the Longshan culture (Yellow River) can be seen from 2300 BCE onward. A wide sphere of interaction was formed which was not yet a world-system, despite the birth of the first kingdoms.55 Various Chinese Neolithic cultures (as well as the city of Taosi) disappeared during the major climatic deterioration occurring at the beginning of the second millennium (Hong et al. 2003; Wang et al. 2005). During the first half of the second millennium, new progress in agriculture and trade in East Asia led to a phase of urbanization and state -building. The Chinese states centered on Erlitou and later on Zhengzhou and Yin (Anyang) formed the cores of successive world-systems, which were connected not only to the Northern Metallurgical Complex and to various routes of the Xinjiang, but also to routes leading to the south (Lingnan, Red River, Sichuan, and Yunnan) (see Map I.18). Here again, it is difficult to assess the size of these systems. In any event, the new ritual and practical importance of bronze led the states to control resources in metals as well as supply routes. The middle and the lower Yangtze Valley appear to have been closely linked to the Yellow River as early as the beginning of the second millennium. Several phases can be seen, as listed in Table I.Con.5. These internal developments in East Asia were accompanied by increasing long distance trade. During the second millennium, the so-called “central world-system” of western Asia experienced a strong expansion not only to the west, but also to the east. The eastward expansion went along with a greater interconnection of the areas of India and East Asia through intermediary groups in Central Asia, whose increasing mobility probably arose from economic and political factors. Connections were also established with the Altai and the Trans-Baikal region. The extension of the transcultural SeimaTurbino phenomenon signals the vitality of northern tin routes; such an extension may be viewed as the response of groups living in eastern Kazakhstan and the Altai to an increased demand for metals and jade and to an overall growth in Eurasian trade.56 Eastern Kazakhstan and the Altai were linked to East Asia via Xinjiang. At the end of the fifteenth century, the demise of the great Erligang centers coincided with a transformation of the system. New capitals emerged further and further to the east, first at Xiaoshuangqiao, then at Huanbei (Anyang) during a Middle Shang period marked by political instability. The Late Shang period saw a flourishing Shang state, with Yinxu (Anyang) as its new capital. This second part of the second millennium saw greater interaction in the Eurasian steppes. The number of metallurgical centers increased, particularly in Kazakhstan and Fergana, and relations with Xinjiang intensified, as shown by the discovery of metallic artifacts similar to those found in the steppes at many sites of this region. Networks providing transport and exchange of various types of ore, ingots, and manufactured products connected the Altai to eastern Europe. The Shang state maintained contacts with Inner Asia through the “Northern Zone Complex,” or the Hexi corridor (Gansu), both of which show connections to Siberian or Central Asian cultures. These contacts allowed for the introduction of horses, chariots, and the cults that went along with them at Anyang. Interactions also developed with Sichuan, with the Yangtze River Valley and with regions further south, where the city of Wucheng appears to have become the center of an independent state. The size of Sanxingdui, the Sichuan capital, peaked during this period. Copper metallurgy reached Lingnan and continental Southeast Asia. We must wait for the first millennium BCE, however, to see more direct and significant contacts between northern China and the regions of Guangdong, Guanxi, and Vietnam.
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My question is how far these trade networks extended into Africa. Presumably, Punt and Kush (along with Egypt of course) were part of a chain of intermediaries linking the sub-Saharan regions to the larger world system. Old Kingdom documents also mention a kingdom called Yam which could have potentially lain further up the Nile from Kush (they provided an Egyptian expedition with "pygmy" individuals of Central African origin). Makes you wonder what was going on in the Upper Nile Basin at that time.
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^ Yes, Yam was discussed before here and here. From the latter thread it can be deduced that Yam was located somewhere on the west bank of the Nile in Nubia but eventually was absorbed by Kush. You're right that there is still much we don't know about the polities of Sub-Saharan East Africa who were part of the trade network with Egypt. We still haven't yet found Punt even though we now have a good idea it lay somewhere in modern Eritrea and northeast Ethiopia.
In fact from your thread here a couple of years back, there is evidence suggesting Kush at least by the Middle Kingdom became an actual empire that was powerful enough to raid Egypt on more than one occasion.
Regardless it becomes clear that something major was going on in East Africa which was a significant player in the Bronze Age trade network especially of the Indian Ocean maritime trade.
Not only do we have the findings of Chanhu-Daro with a possible African in the Indus Valley and African crops like millet and sorghum present there, but we also have evidence that the source of some Chinese bronzes come from Africa!
Origin of the mysterious Yin-Shang bronzes in China indicated by lead isotopes Abstract Fine Yin-Shang bronzes containing lead with puzzlingly highly radiogenic isotopic compositions appeared suddenly in the alluvial plain of the Yellow River around 1400 BC. The Tongkuangyu copper deposit in central China is known to have lead isotopic compositions even more radiogenic and scattered than those of the Yin-Shang bronzes. Most of the Yin-Shang bronzes are tin-copper alloys with high lead contents. The low lead and tin concentrations, together with the less radiogenic lead isotopes of bronzes in an ancient smelting site nearby, however, exclude Tongkuangyu as the sole supplier of the Yin-Shang bronzes. Interestingly, tin ingots/prills and bronzes found in Africa also have highly radiogenic lead isotopes, but it remains mysterious as to how such African bronzes may have been transported to China. Nevertheless, these African bronzes are the only bronzes outside China so far reported that have lead isotopes similar to those of the Yin-Shang bronzes. All these radiogenic lead isotopes plot along ~2.0–2.5 Ga isochron lines, implying that deposits around Archean cratons are the most likely candidates for the sources. African cratons along the Nile and even micro-cratons in the Sahara desert may have similar lead signatures. These places were probably accessible by ancient civilizations and thus are the most favorable suppliers of the bronzes.
06Pb/204Pb versus 207Pb/204Pb diagram for ancient bronzes from China2,7,9 in comparison with tin ingots/prills, bronzes and slags from South Africa and Zimbabwe36 and from copper, lead and galena from the 18th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt42.
Yin-Shang bronzes and Africa metals plot roughly along the same line. Metals from the 18th Dynasty have homogenous lead isotopes, probably due to repeated recycling. Nonetheless, metals from Ancient Egypt plot in the field defined by Yin-Shang bronzes.
Sketched geologic map of Africa showing the distributions of Archean cratons, all of which have provide highly radiogenic “old” lead (2.0–2.5 Ga).
Also shown are the locations of prehistory sites of tin ingots/prills, slag and broznes36 with highly radiogenic lead isotopes. In addition to Kaapvaal and Zimbabwe cratons, Congo, Tanzania and Uganda cratons are close the Nile River and thus were more accessible to ancient people. In addition, there are micro Archean cratons in the Sahara desert, which was more accessible in ancient time. This map used part of the map “color_etopo1_ice_full.tif.zip” from NOAA maps at: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/global/relief/ETOPO1/image/. Image created by J. Varner and E. Lim, CIRES, University of Colorado at Boulder.
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Ancient Egyptians used exotic oils from distant lands to make mummies A workshop used for mummification at Saqqara in Egypt contains remnants of the substances used to make mummies, revealing many came from southern Africa or South-East Asia 1 February 2023 By Michael Marshall An underground workshop found at an ancient Egyptian burial site contains ceramic vessels with traces of the substances used to make mummies. They include resins obtained from as far away as India and South-East Asia, indicating that ancient Egyptians engaged in long-distance trade.
“We could identify a large diversity of substances which were used by the embalmers,” says Maxime Rageot at the University of Tübingen in Germany. “Few of them were locally available.”
The workshop, dating from around 600 BC, was discovered in 2016 at Saqqara, which was the burial ground of Egyptian royalty and elites for centuries. “It was used as an elite cemetery from the very earliest moment of the Egyptian state,” says Elaine Sullivan at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who wasn’t involved in the study.
Close to the pyramid of Unas, archaeologists led by Ramadan Hussein, also at the University of Tübingen, found two vertical shafts dug into the ground. One was 13 metres deep and led to the embalming workshop, while the other was 30 metres deep and led to burial chambers. Hussein died in 2022.
It is the first Egyptian embalming workshop to be found underground, says team member Susanne Beck at the University of Tübingen. This may have been to keep the process secret, but it also had the advantage of keeping decaying bodies cool.
In the workshop, the team found 121 beakers and bowls. Many were labelled: sometimes with instructions like “to put on his head”, sometimes with names of embalming substances and sometimes with administrator titles.
Vessels from the embalming workshop The researchers chose the nine beakers and 22 bowls with the most legible labels for analysis. They studied the chemical residues left in the bowls to find out what substances had been used during embalming and mummification.
A host of substances, including plant oils, tars, resins and animal fats, were discovered. Two examples were cedar oil and heated beeswax. Many of the substances were known to be used in mummification, but some were new.
One new substance was dammar, a gum-like resin obtained from trees in India and South-East Asia. The name “dammar” is a Malay word.
The team also found elemi: a pale yellow resin resembling honey that comes from trees in the rainforests of South Asia and southern Africa.
The dammar and elemi show that Egyptian embalming drove early globalisation, says Philipp Stockhammer at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, another member of the team. “You really needed to transport these resins over large distances.” It fits with other evidence of long-distance trade at the time.
The ancient Egyptian elite liked exotic goods as much as modern capitalists, says Sullivan. At times when the state was powerful and organised, “we see a great interest in the outside world and in connections to the outside world and bringing those things from the outside world together”.
Stockhammer and Sullivan both say that the substances were transported by chains of traders. “The Egyptians don’t have to be going to the eastern side of India themselves,” says Sullivan.
The researchers were also able to translate two new words. Many texts on mummification refer to antiu and sefet. The former had been tentatively translated as “myrrh” or “incense”, and the latter as “a sacred oil”. However, because they were written on pieces of pottery with residue inside, it was possible to identify them. It turns out antiu is a mixture of oils or tars from conifers. Meanwhile, sefet is an unguent – an ointment or lubricant – containing plant additives.
Many of the substances had antibacterial and antifungal properties, and were combined into elaborate mixtures. For Stockhammer, the complexity of the substances displays “enormous personal knowledge that was accumulated through these centuries of experience of embalming human individuals”.
That fits with textual evidence that priests tasked with embalming were important people with considerable skill, says Sullivan. “They would have needed to have a lot of ritual knowledge and a lot of material knowledge,” she says. The body had to be preserved physically and rites had to be performed correctly according to the Egyptian religion. It was “both a spiritual and physical practice”.
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^^ The Maritime Silk Road was traditionally said to have started in the 2nd century BCE and flourished until the 15th century CE, but the above findings indicate it started by the 6th century BCE if not earlier!
It explains how the maritime trade or thalassocracy was begun by sea nomads probably Ausstronesian speakers around the Isthmus of Kra.
And here is an even older paper from 1950: The Sabaeans and Possible Egyptian Influences in Indonesia The author makes it clear that Egyptian influence is over-exaggerated but what is clear is that there was ongoing trade between Southeast Asia and Africa including Egypt but that much of the influence appears Indian followed by Sabaean.
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Trade networks stretched also from the Mediterranean up to Scandinavia. One example is the earlier mentioned glass pearls from Egypt found in Denmark. Others are findings of amber in several places in the Mediterranean. And the copper in Scandinavian bronzes came from several places in Europe, from Tyrol in the north to places like southern Spain, Sardinia and Cyprus in the south. Included in the trade network was also the British isles which were a major source of tin. Also northern Spain was a source of tin.
Swedish researchers also see a connection between motifs in Scandinavian rock art with the trade networks, and with rock art from different parts of Europe, including southern Europe.
The connections between the Mediterranean and Scandinavia dwindled in the early iron age, but later they seems to have been partly reestablished, especially during Roman time where the Roman empire connected south and north.
But some connections existed also during Greek time, which is witnessed by Pytheas in his now lost book about a journey to a place called Thule in the 300s BC. Thule has been speculated to possibly have been Scandinavia.
And already Hesiod in the 600s BC talks about contacts with people beyond the Northern wind, which probably was somewhere in northern Europe.
Here is a paper about a possible connection between metal trade and rock art in Bronze age Europe.
Ling, Johan and Uhnér, Claes, 2014: Rock art and Metal Trade Adoranten
Map showing the major sources of copper and tin that supplied Scandinavia with metal in the Bronze Age. Copper deposits are marked with yellow stripes while sources of tin are marked with silver.
Copper and tin bearing regions with finds of Baltic amber marked with red circles.
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^ Yes, I already cited an article in my opening post on Egyptian and Mesopotamian goods found in Denmark including beads from the Amarna Kingdom of Egypt. The Nordic Bronze Age Culture was a major exporter of amber to the rest of world. I think it's a shame that due to Greco-Roman bias not many people hear much of the other ancient cultures of Europe which were actually more advanced than many people realize. The good thing is archaeology is putting an end to the "back-water barbarians" of northern Europe fallacy.
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^^ Kristian Kristiansen is one of the leading experts on Scandinavian and European bronze age. I have actually met him several times, both during my studies and afterwards. He is rather inspiring.
Flemming Kaul and Jeanette Varberg from the first article, are also prominent archaeologists from Denmark. They are among other things involved in a big research project about mobility in Bronze age Denmark. Kristian Kristiansen is also involved in the project.
quote:Tales of Bronze Age Women/ Tales of Bronze Age People
Tales of Bronze Age People
Tales of Bronze Age People is a “Semper Ardens” interdisciplinary research project, which is a continuation of the ongoing “Tales of Bronze Age Women” research project, both of which are supported by the Carlsberg Foundation. The aim of Tales of Bronze Age People is to shed light on the potential significance that human mobility might have had for the social development that is observed during the Bronze Age. In relation to “Tales of Bronze Age Women”, this new project will expand the investigation of human mobility over the next several years through multi-disciplinary analyses of an additional number of women, as well as men and children from both elite and commoners’ burials. The focus will still be on Danish material. The project is interdisciplinary and uses “state-of-the-art” scientific and physical anthropological methodologies as well as phylogenetic analyses.
In addition to the National Museum's own rich collection of human skeletal material, the project includes collaboration with a number of local museums with additional collections of human skeletal material from previous and ongoing excavations. The results of the scientific analyses will be combined and integrated with the archaeological evidence, thereby providing a more detailed and contextualized knowledge of mobility and trade as a potential driving force for change in Bronze Age society.
Tales of Bronze Age Women
Tales of Bronze Age Women is a 3-year multi-disciplinary research project that investigates the mobility, identity and social roles of Bronze Age Women in Denmark. The project, which is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation, focuses thus on state-of-the-art biogeochemical, biomolecular, anthropological and archaeological investigations of human remains.
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The Uluburun shipwreck, which always pops up in these contexts is really a magnificent time capsule telling about the extensive contacts and trade going on in the Mediterranean in the Bronze age. It had goods from several different cultures onboard when it sunk.
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It is well known that the Nile Valley was part of an extensive trade network extending across the Mediterranean and Levant, the Sinai and Arabia. This is abundantly clear from the many surviving artworks from the Nile Valley itself showing foreigners from different lands. The issue is what other items were part of this trade and with whom and from how far away. This also potentially includes trade with India, especially in the later periods via Kush and Axum.
We also know that by the late dynastic period the Naval reach of the Nile Valley had extended greatly as a result of a partnership with the Phoenicians.
quote: At some point between 610 and before 594 BC, Necho reputedly commissioned an expedition of Phoenicians, who it is said in three years sailed from the Red Sea around Africa back to the mouth of the Nile; and would thereby be the first completion of the Cape Route. Herodotus' account was handed down to him by oral tradition, but is seen as potentially credible because he stated with disbelief that the Phoenicians "as they sailed on a westerly course round the southern end of Libya (Africa), they had the sun on their right"—to northward of them (The Histories 4.42). Pliny reported that Hanno had circumnavigated Africa, which may have been a conflation with Necho's voyage, while Strabo, Polybius, and Ptolemy doubted the description; at the time it was not generally known that Africa was surrounded by an ocean (with the southern part of Africa being thought connected to Asia). F. C. H. Wendel, writing in 1890, concurred with Herodotus as did James Baikie. Egyptologist A. B. Lloyd disputed in 1977 that an Egyptian Pharaoh would authorize such an expedition, except for the reasons of Asiatic conques and trade in the ancient maritime routes.
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^ Much is often made of the Phoenicians as the main seafarers of the Mediterranean yet not many people know about the other seafaring cultures especially of the Western Mediterranean particularly the Tyrrhenian and Balearic Seas. These areas were inhabited by the seafaring Nuragic, Torrean, and Talaiotic cultures. There is even evidence that these peoples sailed past the Straits of Gibraltar around the Atlantic and may have some connection to the legend of Atlantis.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: ^^ Kristian Kristiansen is one of the leading experts on Scandinavian and European bronze age. I have actually met him several times, both during my studies and afterwards. He is rather inspiring.
Flemming Kaul and Jeanette Varberg from the first article, are also prominent archaeologists from Denmark. They are among other things involved in a big research project about mobility in Bronze age Denmark. Kristian Kristiansen is also involved in the project.
Wow, lucky you! Kristiansen was one of the scholars who got me interested in ancient northern European history and away from the Greco-Roman bias. I've read a couple of Kristiansen's works years ago in college namely his books Europe Before History and The Rise of Bronze Age Society. Many people forget that the metal naming system we use for ancient time periods like Bronze Age and Iron Age was invented by the Danish scholar Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. In many ways Christiansen is Thomsen's successor. Recently there have been many findings about Bronze Age trade in the North Sea between the British Isles and Denmark, but I've only read a few reports of the Nordic Bronze Age's activities in the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Bothnia this is what I'm curious about. Also, what do you think about the legend of Thule?
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Thule has been debated extensively through the years among historians and archaeologists. It is mentioned in some ancient writings but historians are not quite sure where it was located. Especially Pytheas lost work On The Ocean (fragments survive in later writings) about his travel to Thule has produced many speculations about where Thule was located, from the British Isles, to Denmark, to the coasts of Norway or Sweden. There have even been speculations about Iceland and Greenland.
The thought that Pytheas reached Denmark, or the Scandinavian peninsula, is not unrealistic to imagine. Maybe Pytheas also reached the Baltic Sea.
Even earlier the Northern countries were referred to in ancient Greek literature. Already Hesiod mentions "the people beyond the Northern Wind" (Hyperboreans), perhaps a remembrance from contacts that existed during the Bronze age.
Also during the Middle ages Thule continued to fascinate people. Here it is on the map Carta marina from the 16th century.
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About the Baltic region there is for example an interesting Doctoral thesis about trade and contacts and how it manifested in a grave type called stone ship settings, ship formed grave monuments that are common in the area during the later bronze age.
Wehlin, Joakim, 2013: Baltic Stone Ships. Monuments and Meeting places during the Late Bronze Age (the dissertation is written in Swedish, but have a summary in English)
quote: During the Late Bronze Age, the number of metal objects in the Baltic Sea region increased tremendously. Mobility and interaction in this northern inland sea intensified. This occurred in a period of prehistory when the ship was the predominant symbol in southern Scandinavia. The ship can be found in rock carvings, on bronze objects and by way of erected stone monuments: stone ship settings. These stone ships are mainly to be found in the Baltic Sea region, with a marked concentration on Gotland. The stone ship settings and their landscape context are the focus of this dissertation. The objective is to clarify whether it is possible to find evidence of social groupings of people in the Nordic Late Bronze Age (1100-500 BC), by focusing on the stone ship monument, adopting a maritime approach. These people might have been part of a maritime institution specializing in trade and long distance journeys during this period, thus achieving a more advanced maritime way of life in the Baltic Sea. Are the ship settings an expression of these specific groups of people, who utilized their practices to position and articulate themselves in the landscape? If such maritime institutions can in fact be traced, there must also be uniformly structured locations for these groups of people to meet in, some kind of antecedents of harbours. By taking an inland sea, the Baltic Sea, as a geographical demarcation, a different perspective of prehistory is attained. The area in the Late Bronze Age and earliest Iron Age (950/900-200 BC) differed from the Nordic Bronze Age sphere. The communities around the Baltic Sea, through the establishment and sharing of mutual interests, seem to have reached a certain degree of consensus. This concordance might well be largely explained by the complex dependency on metal. Such a manifestation would not have been possible without an infrastructure or network, in this case a maritime one. This is something which has previously been overlooked in discussions on the Bronze Age in the Baltic Sea.
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Just as ancient Egypt with kings like Tutankhamon or Ramesses II have captured the imagination of people so has also the Nordic Bronze age (maybe not as much as the viking age though). One example is the popularity of the Egtved girl, a blonde girl whose remains were found in a Danish barrow in 1921. She was buried in an oak wood coffin and her clothing and jewelry were well preserved. Also her hair. Today she is something of a poster girl for Danish bronze age and there are theater plays and comic books about her life. Also figurines and artworks depicting her are very popular. There is even a beer named after her.
Apparently the Egtved Girl wasn't originally from Denmark according to strontium analyses of her teeth and bones, and the same was true for the Skrydstrup Woman.
According to the above video it is inferred that the Skrydstrup Woman is originally from Bohemia. The same could be true with Egtved Girl but they haven't stated as much.
What were the roles of these Bronze Age women? It's assumed that they were priestesses of some sort but all we know is that they were of high status-- well fed and in relative good health-- buried with luxury items. They were well traveled-- not being native to Denmark but coming from elsewhere and having goods from other parts of Europe. The Egtved Girl may well be a ritual dancer since the clothing she wore was well suited for high range of movement and mobility such as somersault type.
Also, the Egtved Girl's belt plate is definitely ritualistic since it is the type used in scrying.
So apparently a lot was happening in the interior of Europe during the Bronze Age that the Greco-Romanocentric scholars don't cover. What languages did these people speak? According to linguists Proto-Germanic didn't even exist until around the the Iron Age, so it is only presumed that the peoples of Nordic Bronze Age spoke 'Pre-Proto-Germanic' languages that had close ties to other languages spoken perhaps by those of the Urnfield Cultures.
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Could later Germanic religious traditions shed any light on those Bronze Age Nordic cultures? Maybe there's something buried in what we know about Norse mythology that we could trace back to the Nordic Bronze Age, even though the sagas and other information we have on Norse beliefs were written down much later during the Middle Ages.
Apparently the Egtved Girl wasn't originally from Denmark according to strontium analyses of her teeth and bones, and the same was true for the Skrydstrup Woman.
Yes the Strontium analyze together with stylistic comparisons of her jewelry suggests that she maybe have an origin in the Schwarzwald area in Germany. She seems to have travelled to Denmark, and then back and then to Denmark again a couple of times. A couple of other researchers have questioned the Strontium analyze but Karin Frei and others at the National museum in Copenhagen seem quite confident that their measurement are reliable. And for example an armring she wore seems to have stylistic similarities with the ones found in the Schwarzwald area.
In this film they speculate about her origin and why she travelled such a long way
There are a lot of research right now about mobility and contacts in Europe during the Bronze age. Among other things researchers analyze bronze objects to find the origin of the copper and tin that make up the bronzes. In Scandinavian bronzes they have found copper from Cyprus, Sardinia, Spain and the Alps (including Austria). And the tin seems to have come from places like Britain and Northern Spain.
Some researchers compare the Scandinavian bronze age with the Viking age because of all these contacts and because of the central importance of the ship in rock art, on bronze items. Also when it concerns the ship formed stone settings which exists in the later part of the bronze age and get a renaissance in the Viking age.
It is exciting to think about that the Egtved girl were buried at the same time as Amenhotep III reigned in Egypt.
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quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: Could later Germanic religious traditions shed any light on those Bronze Age Nordic cultures? Maybe there's something buried in what we know about Norse mythology that we could trace back to the Nordic Bronze Age, even though the sagas and other information we have on Norse beliefs were written down much later during the Middle Ages.
There have been many theories about which myths and religious elements that can have survived from the bronze age. Among other things we can see that certain types of tombs (stone settings, barrows) continues in the iron age. Ship formed stone settings exists in the bronze age and are getting used again in the Vendel age (550-c 800 AD) and Viking age (c 800 - 1066 AD). Some motifs on bronze age rock art also looks a bit like later representations of Gods and other mythological figures. Also the practice of offering things in lakes and bogs seems to have it´s roots in the bronze age, and maybe even earlier.
One think that Bronze age Scandinavians at least talked an Indoeuropéan language, which Scandinavians probably done since around 5000 years ago. But there are no written records so we do not exactly know how it sounded.
There are also many theories which other, foreign religious practices that can have influenced Scandinavians. We see for example similarities in certain motifs on rock art with rock art in Spain, Portgugal and Italy from the same time. Speculations have also been made about influences from Minoans, Mycenaeans and also Egyptians.
This bronze age petroglyph from the West coast of Sweden has certain similarities with the Viking age Thor, the god of thunder. Thor is also travelling in a chariot (drawn by two Billy goats).
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Some of the movements in the bronze age could give rise to a lot of speculation: Why did people move? What happened when they came to a certain place? Where there cultural collisions? Here is an example from Poland which gave rise to some speculations
quote: During the Early Bronze Age there was a very high level of territorial mobility of the Únětice culture in Silesia, a large community inhabiting the south western territories of Poland approximately 4,000 years ago. This is found in a new doctoral thesis from the University of Gothenburg which also conclusively confirms the first case of human long-distance overseas journey to Silesia from Scandinavia, probably from southern Sweden.
quote: 'Over 3800 years ago, a young male, possibly born in Skåne [a province in Southern Sweden], made a journey of over 900 kilometers south, to Wroclaw in Poland. He died violently in Wroclaw, killed by Úněticean farmers, possibly due to romance with two local females, who were murdered together with him. This 'Bronze Age love story', with no happy ending is the first case of Swedish-Polish contacts in history ever', concludes archaeologist Dalia Pokutta, author of the thesis.
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Relatively recently they found that the tin found in the Uluburun wreckage came from mines in Central Asia (Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) and todays Turkey. New isotopic analysis techniques make it easier to trace tin to its original sources
quote:Abstract This paper provides the first comprehensive sourcing analysis of the tin ingots carried by the well-known Late Bronze Age shipwreck found off the Turkish coast at Uluburun (ca. 1320 BCE). Using lead isotope, trace element, and tin isotope analyses, this study demonstrates that ores from Central Asia (Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) were used to produce one-third of the Uluburun tin ingots. The remaining two-thirds were derived from the Taurus Mountains of Turkey, namely, from stream tin and residual low-grade mineralization remaining after extensive exploitation in the Early Bronze Age. The results of our metallurgical analysis, along with archaeological and textual data, illustrate that a culturally diverse, multiregional, and multivector system underpinned Eurasian tin exchange during the Late Bronze Age. The demonstrable scale of this connectivity reveals a vast and disparate network that relied as much on the participation of small regional communities as on supposedly hegemonic institutions of large, centralized states.
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: Could later Germanic religious traditions shed any light on those Bronze Age Nordic cultures? Maybe there's something buried in what we know about Norse mythology that we could trace back to the Nordic Bronze Age, even though the sagas and other information we have on Norse beliefs were written down much later during the Middle Ages.
There have been many theories about which myths and religious elements that can have survived from the bronze age. Among other things we can see that certain types of tombs (stone settings, barrows) continues in the iron age. Ship formed stone settings exists in the bronze age and are getting used again in the Vendel age (550-c 800 AD) and Viking age (c 800 - 1066 AD). Some motifs on bronze age rock art also looks a bit like later representations of Gods and other mythological figures. Also the practice of offering things in lakes and bogs seems to have it´s roots in the bronze age, and maybe even earlier.
One think that Bronze age Scandinavians at least talked an Indoeuropéan language, which Scandinavians probably done since around 5000 years ago. But there are no written records so we do not exactly know how it sounded.
There are also many theories which other, foreign religious practices that can have influenced Scandinavians. We see for example similarities in certain motifs on rock art with rock art in Spain, Portgugal and Italy from the same time. Speculations have also been made about influences from Minoans, Mycenaeans and also Egyptians.
This bronze age petroglyph from the West coast of Sweden has certain similarities with the Viking age Thor, the god of thunder. Thor is also travelling in a chariot (drawn by two Billy goats).
Archaeopteryx is correct. Plus you also have to keep in mind that mythologies have elements from different time periods that compound together. So for example, while Norse mythology has stories or elements in the stories that may date to the Bronze Age, there could also be stories and elements that go back further into the Neolithic.
Academics seem to agree that the Indo-European expansions from the eastern steppes to the rest of Europe occurred from the Chalcolithic to Bronze Age times. During this period the subfamilies of IE that we are familiar with today had not even fully developed and were part of other IE languages some we know about and others we don't.
Billy goats are sacred to Thor and the Baltic thunder god Perkon and Slavic thunder god Perun.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: Some of the movements in the bronze age could give rise to a lot of speculation: Why did people move? What happened when they came to a certain place? Where there cultural collisions? Here is an example from Poland which gave rise to some speculations
quote: During the Early Bronze Age there was a very high level of territorial mobility of the Únětice culture in Silesia, a large community inhabiting the south western territories of Poland approximately 4,000 years ago. This is found in a new doctoral thesis from the University of Gothenburg which also conclusively confirms the first case of human long-distance overseas journey to Silesia from Scandinavia, probably from southern Sweden.
quote: 'Over 3800 years ago, a young male, possibly born in Skåne [a province in Southern Sweden], made a journey of over 900 kilometers south, to Wroclaw in Poland. He died violently in Wroclaw, killed by Úněticean farmers, possibly due to romance with two local females, who were murdered together with him. This 'Bronze Age love story', with no happy ending is the first case of Swedish-Polish contacts in history ever', concludes archaeologist Dalia Pokutta, author of the thesis.
I don't know why there is some sort of surprise at the idea of people travelling long distances away from their homes back in ancient times as if long distance travel is a 'modern' phenomenon. It's as if they think with the Neolithic, people just settled down wherever they were and nobody moved elsewhere. Persons traveled elsewhere even long distances for the same reasons people do today, to seek job opportunities, for political purposes, marriage alliances etc. Even in the Bible Abraham who lived during the Bronze Age moved from his southern Mesopotamian home in Ur to Haran in northern Mesopotamia before finally settling down in Canaan. Egyptian kings from the Thebald in Upper Egypt moved to Menefer (Memphis) in Lower Egypt. In the case of the two sacerdotal females and where they hail from it should be noted that both Schwartzwald (Black Forest) of Germany and Böhmerwald (Bohemian Forest) of Czech were considered religious sanctuaries by ancient Germanic tribes and centers of ritual and cultic activities.
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quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: The Uluburun shipwreck, which always pops up in these contexts is really a magnificent time capsule telling about the extensive contacts and trade going on in the Mediterranean in the Bronze age. It had goods from several different cultures onboard when it sunk.
Egyptian scarab with the name of Nefertiti found in the Uluburun wreck.
quote: Relatively recently they found that the tin found in the Uluburun wreckage came from mines in Central Asia (Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) and todays Turkey. New isotopic analysis techniques make it easier to trace tin to its original sources
quote:Abstract This paper provides the first comprehensive sourcing analysis of the tin ingots carried by the well-known Late Bronze Age shipwreck found off the Turkish coast at Uluburun (ca. 1320 BCE). Using lead isotope, trace element, and tin isotope analyses, this study demonstrates that ores from Central Asia (Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) were used to produce one-third of the Uluburun tin ingots. The remaining two-thirds were derived from the Taurus Mountains of Turkey, namely, from stream tin and residual low-grade mineralization remaining after extensive exploitation in the Early Bronze Age. The results of our metallurgical analysis, along with archaeological and textual data, illustrate that a culturally diverse, multiregional, and multivector system underpinned Eurasian tin exchange during the Late Bronze Age. The demonstrable scale of this connectivity reveals a vast and disparate network that relied as much on the participation of small regional communities as on supposedly hegemonic institutions of large, centralized states.
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Yes we can also see the Scanian man from the province of Scania in Southern Sweden who travelled 900 km down into todays Poland before he met his faith there. To get there he must also travel over the sea.
A map showing the location of Silesia where the man from Scania were buried. It is quite a distance from the southernmost part of Sweden.
Long travels are probably as old as humanity, as for example in the late Paleolithic of Southern Scandinavia where people followed reindeer from Germany up in Denmark and to Scania and further up, depending where the ice were located at any given moment. When the reindeer moved people moved with them.
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Getting back to the New Scientist article on Egyptian exotic goods, I am curious about the imported wood from southern African forests. Who were these mysterious trading partners? As far as I know Kush and Punt controlled the trade routes further south in Sub-Sahara and we know next to nothing of these other peoples. According to the Periplus Maris Erythraei, which is dates to the 100 CE there existed a polity called Azania that ranged from southern Somalia and Kenya down to Tanzania including the Zanzibar Islands in what is the modern Swahili Coast. Before that in the 5th century BC. Herodotus mentions a kingdom of a people the Greeks called Macrobians that was the southernmost known people in contrast to the Hyperborians of Northern Europe who were the northernmost. So who were the Bronze Age people that far south who sold southern African wood that is found as far north as Mozambique??
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For those interested in the sometimes well preserved human remains of the Danish bronze age barrows there is an old book who tells about them and how they were found. Strontium analysis and similar had not been applied on them at that time, but the book is still interesting
GLOB, P. V. Högarnas folk. Bronsålderns människor bevarade i 3000 år (People of the barrows, Bronze age people preserved for 3000 years).
I do not think it is translated into English though (?) Actually much of the older archaeological literature in Scandinavia were never translated to English. It was written in Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. Also many Scandinavians wrote in German. Still today a lot of Scandinavian archaeology is written in Scandinavian languages, with perhaps a summary in English.
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Getting back to the New Scientist article on Egyptian exotic goods, I am curious about the imported wood from southern African forests. Who were these mysterious trading partners? As far as I know Kush and Punt controlled the trade routes further south in Sub-Sahara and we know next to nothing of these other peoples. According to the Periplus Maris Erythraei, which is dates to the 100 CE there existed a polity called Azania that ranged from southern Somalia and Kenya down to Tanzania including the Zanzibar Islands in what is the modern Swahili Coast. Before that in the 5th century BC. Herodotus mentions a kingdom of a people the Greeks called Macrobians that was the southernmost known people in contrast to the Hyperborians of Northern Europe who were the northernmost. So who were the Bronze Age people that far south who sold southern African wood that is found as far north as Mozambique??
Would it not be possible through analysis of preserved wood be able to pin point more exactly its sources? Maybe growth rings are possible to use too (even if they are not always so marked in trees that grow in a climate with less pronounced seasons) (?)
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Getting back to the New Scientist article on Egyptian exotic goods, I am curious about the imported wood from southern African forests. Who were these mysterious trading partners? As far as I know Kush and Punt controlled the trade routes further south in Sub-Sahara and we know next to nothing of these other peoples. According to the Periplus Maris Erythraei, which is dates to the 100 CE there existed a polity called Azania that ranged from southern Somalia and Kenya down to Tanzania including the Zanzibar Islands in what is the modern Swahili Coast. Before that in the 5th century BC. Herodotus mentions a kingdom of a people the Greeks called Macrobians that was the southernmost known people in contrast to the Hyperborians of Northern Europe who were the northernmost. So who were the Bronze Age people that far south who sold southern African wood that is found as far north as Mozambique??
What kind of African wood are we talking about? I think it could be people from West or Central Africa who originally obtained the wood, which could have reached Egypt via the Darb El Arba'in route that passes through the Western Desert.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: Would it not be possible through analysis of preserved wood be able to pin point more exactly its sources? Maybe growth rings are possible to use too (even if they are not always so marked in trees that grow in a climate with less pronounced seasons) (?)
Unfortunately almost all the wood we have from ancient Egypt has been cut and fashioned. I don't know of any logs and timber found.
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: What kind of African wood are we talking about? I think it could be people from West or Central Africa who originally obtained the wood, which could have reached Egypt via the Darb El Arba'in route that passes through the Western Desert.
According to the article I cited: "The team also found elemi: a pale yellow resin resembling honey that comes from trees in the rainforests of South Asia and southern Africa."
South Asia aside, the closest area to the Egypt's southern trade route that has trees of the type found in Southern Africa is in Mozambique. Which means that the Azanian trade route described in the Periplus must have been active in the Bronze Age as well.
The elemi essential oil that Egyptians used is still a prized commodity today a natural antiseptic and moisturizer used in cleaning products, soaps, shampoos etc.
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quote:Cyprus's copper deposits created one of the most important trade hubs in the Bronze Age The coveted metal copper and a sheltered location turned the Cypriot village of Hala Sultan Tekke into one of the most important trade hubs of the Late Bronze Age. This has been shown by excavations led by researchers from the University of Gothenburg. Their study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science confirms the importance of the Bronze Age city in the first period of international trade in the Mediterranean.
quote:Abstract This paper presents the results from extensive and intensive field work at Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus, supported by scientific analyses. They shed light on the scope of interregional trade in which this Late Bronze Age harbour city participated from the 15th to the 12th centuries B.C. Although the results from older excavations suggested the city’s engagement in interregional trade, these preliminary conclusions were based on chronologically and geographically restricted material and only a few scientific analyses, which have since been complemented and partly revised. It is now clear that long-distance exchange, based on the large-scale intra-urban production and distribution of copper, involved regional and more distant suppliers of coveted goods, and resulted in the transition of the settlement from a late 17th century B.C. village to a trade hub with a minimum extent of 25 ha.
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Here is another article about copper in ancient Egypt and where some of it came from
quote: Two new studies, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, offer the first comprehensive analytical datasets of Protodynastic to Old Kingdom Egyptian copper-based artifacts (c. 3rd millennium BC), analyzing the provenance of Egyptian copper. As elaborated in a methodological comment, the studies constitute an important step forward in current knowledge on copper provenance and the subsequent economic, social and cultural insights into ancient Egypt.
quote: The first study by Frederik W. Rademakers, Georges Verly, Luc Delvaux and Patrick Degryse, based on artifacts from the Royal Museums of Art and History (RMAH) in Brussels, suggests predominant reliance on relatively local ore, from the Eastern Desert and Sinai Peninsula.
quote: The second study from four Czech institutions, led by PhD candidates Jirí Kmošek (University of Pardubice) and Martin Odler (Charles University, Prague), investigates Egyptian copper-based artifacts from the Egyptian Museum of Leipzig University in Germany, found at the sites of Abusir, Abydos and Giza. The 22 artifacts show similar production technology, but diverse origins of the metal, including an Early Dynastic Egyptian object from Abusir, high nickel metal in which is consistent with ores and artifacts from Early Bronze Age Anatolia, in present-day Turkey.
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Interesting is also the Egyptian contacts with the Minoans and their cultural exchange. I made a thread about it, especially about the Minoan or Minoan style paintings in Egyptian palaces at Tell el-Dab‘a/‘Ezbet Helmi in the eastern Nile Delta (from 18th Dynasty).
quote:Bracelets found in the tomb of the ancient Egyptian queen Hetepheres I — the mother of Khufu, the pharaoh who commissioned the Great Pyramid of Giza — reveal new information about the trade networks that once linked the Old Kingdom to Greece.
After analyzing samples taken from the jewelry, an international team of archaeologists determined that the bracelets contained copper, gold and lead. There were also inlays made using semiprecious gemstones such as turquoise, lapis lazuli and carnelian, which were common features in ancient Egyptian jewelry, according to a statement.
However, the pieces, including one depicting a butterfly, also contained traces of silver, despite there not being any known local sources of the precious metal in ancient Egypt in 2600 B.C., when the items were crafted. The team looked at the ratio of isotopes — atoms that have different numbers of neutrons than usual in their nuclei — in the lead. Based on this analysis, the researchers determined that the materials were "consistent with ores from the Cyclades," a group of Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, as well as with those from Lavrion, a town in southern Greece, according to a study published in the June issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
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When Egypt traded with Punt and places in Africa even beyond Punt, what did they leave in return for the goods they acquired? And how much of that are today visible in the archaeological record? As we have seen earlier in this thread Egyptian artifacts are found in many places in Sudan, the Middle East and Europe (even up in Scandinavia). But which ancient Egyptian artifacts are found in countries like Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda and beyond?
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That's a good question. I haven't really done research on Egyptian goods in those regions you mentioned but I've only read a few 2nd hand accounts claiming to have found Egyptian artifacts in Ethiopia and Somalia.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: Here is another article about copper in ancient Egypt and where some of it came from
quote: Two new studies, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, offer the first comprehensive analytical datasets of Protodynastic to Old Kingdom Egyptian copper-based artifacts (c. 3rd millennium BC), analyzing the provenance of Egyptian copper. As elaborated in a methodological comment, the studies constitute an important step forward in current knowledge on copper provenance and the subsequent economic, social and cultural insights into ancient Egypt.
quote: The first study by Frederik W. Rademakers, Georges Verly, Luc Delvaux and Patrick Degryse, based on artifacts from the Royal Museums of Art and History (RMAH) in Brussels, suggests predominant reliance on relatively local ore, from the Eastern Desert and Sinai Peninsula.
quote: The second study from four Czech institutions, led by PhD candidates Jirí Kmošek (University of Pardubice) and Martin Odler (Charles University, Prague), investigates Egyptian copper-based artifacts from the Egyptian Museum of Leipzig University in Germany, found at the sites of Abusir, Abydos and Giza. The 22 artifacts show similar production technology, but diverse origins of the metal, including an Early Dynastic Egyptian object from Abusir, high nickel metal in which is consistent with ores and artifacts from Early Bronze Age Anatolia, in present-day Turkey.
According to Egyptian legends the Shemsu Heru (Followers of Horus) were also called Mesenitu (metal smiths) and gained ascendancy over the Anu who were the prior dominant people in Kmt who still worked with stone and whose main ritual implement was obsidian called menu-km or ka-km (black jewel or black vitale) while the Mesenitu's ritual implement was copper called ankh (same root as the word for life). The same legend points to the origin of the Mesenitu in the Eastern Desert.
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On Cyprus a Swedish archaeological team have made many findings of luxuary items and other goods in Bronze age graves near the ancient city of Hala Sultan Tekke. Many of the objects tells about the contacts between Cyprus and surrounding cultures, including Egypt.
Thus the team has found gold and ivory from Egypt, stones as blue lapis lazuli, dark red carnelian and blue-green turquoise from places like Afghanistan, India and Sinai. There are also objects made of amber from the Baltic Sea area.
There was found necklaces with pendants made in Egypt during the 18th dynasty. Also pottery was found, which had been imported from mainland Greece. Also pots from Turkey, Syria, Palestine and Egypt was among the findings.
Among the items were also weapons of bronze, some of them with ivory inlays and a gold-mounted seal of the hard mineral hematite with carvings of gods and rulers.
Much of these riches came through Cyprus richness in copper which was exported to surrounding cultures.
The Swedish Cyprus expedition has worked in the area since 2010. One can read more about their work on their home page
quote:Excavations at Hala Sultan Tekke
(The Söderberg Expedition)
Introduction
In May and June 2023, an international team headed by Professor Peter M. Fischer from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and assisted by Dr Rainer Feldbacher, carried out excavations at the Late Cypriot harbour city of Dromolaxia-Vyzakia / Hala Sultan Tekke. Parallel with and after the excavations, another group of the Swedish team, supervised by Dr Teresa Bürge processed the finds from previous excavations kept at the storerooms of the Archaeological Museum of the Larnaka District. The Swedish team was assisted by bioarchaeologist Yuko Miyauchi, PhD student of Professor Kirsi Lorentz (Cyprus Institute), and Professor Sorin Hermon and his team (also from the Cyprus Institute). The teams of the Cyprus Institute provided expertise for the excavation and recording of the human remains, and 2D and 3D presentations of objects in addition to material analyses. The team was supported by students of the Archaeological Research Unit (ARU, directed by V. Kassianidou).
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More evidence of the Bronze Age Far Eastern sea trade.
The Ancient Spice Trade, Part II: Egypt and North Africa If we could wander the streets of the workers' villages near Giza in Egypt some 4600 years ago, we would find the intense aroma of spices from Asia as strong then as they are today. Spices were used in antiquity to give strength to the builders of the pyramids and the draw of the spice markets and perfume shops a mere stone's throw from those same pyramids today gives strength to modern-day explorers weary of the kitsch dealers and souvenir hawkers in the tourist traps. Stroll through one of these spice districts and be prepared for an assault on your senses as the smells of nutmeg and cloves from Indonesia mix with cinnamon from China and frankincense from Arabia - just as they did in the time of the pharaohs.
Hieroglyphics from Egyptian tombs and temples as far back as 5500 years tell of the burning of incense and sweet herbs for religious and mystical rituals, with cedars and aromatics being offered up to the gods and goddesses to ensure the fertility of the land. It was through this smoke - this perfume for the gods, or per fumum in Latin - that priests, then as now, tried to lift our religious spirits to a higher place.
Especially interesting from these temple walls is a record of an expedition sent out by Queen Hatshepsut around 1500 BC. Hieroglyphics on her mortuary temple at Deir el Bahri (in western Thebes, across the Nile from modern Luxor; figure 2) tell us volumes. Not only did the Queen favour cassia and cinnamon from China and Java, but she seemed particularly enamoured with frankincense - so much so that, according to inscriptions on her temple, she commissioned a shopping expedition to Punt. This fabled land lay somewhere to the south or east of Egypt, in the area of present-day Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia or perhaps even southern Arabia (figure 3). The Egyptians had known about Punt for some time before the 18th Dynasty of Queen Hatshepsut, but probably named it the "Divine Land" because they saw it as an endless source of frankincense, myrrh and cassia - all vital to their lives, rituals and afterlife. It was for this reason that Hatshepsut sent out her expedition in 1500 BC to bring back 31 frankincense trees, myrrh (and myrrh trees), cinnamon, numerous varieties of other incenses, cosmetics and perfumes.
Figure 1. Background left to right: frankincense, scented oil and myrrh; foreground left to right: cinnamon, saffron and scented woods (photo: Chris Mundigler)
Figure 3. Map of north African trade routes
The inscriptions on her temple walls tell us that Hatshepsut's shopping spree imported such volume and variety of scents and spices for the first time that "Never was brought the like of this for any king who has been since the beginning1." With the number of trees she was importing, it may very well have been that Hatshepsut was trying to start her own production of frankincense resin. In all likelihood, though, she was unsuccessful as there are no records of commercial frankincense cultivation in Egypt at that, or any other, time.
While the Deir el Bahri inscriptions are a very important reference of the spice trade into Egypt - and accessible for any tourist to see - as we found out in the last issue of Labyrinth (number 82, October 2003), Herodotus told us about the fantastic sources of cinnamon and other spices in the ancient world as well (Histories, Book III). However, "huge birds of prey who made their nests out of massive cinnamon sticks" aside, what were the real sources of these Far Eastern spices coming into Egypt and North Africa?
In all likelihood, it was Indonesian merchants, using favourable winds to drive their ocean-going canoes, who travelled at great peril across the Indian Ocean to the northeast coast of Africa. In the area south of modern-day Somalia (figure 3), they off-loaded spices which could only be found in the Far East - cinnamon, cassia, cloves, nutmeg, mace, pepper and ginger. From there, the spices went north through Somalia to the Red Sea and then on to the Arabian merchants Herodotus mentioned. Once in Arabia, spices were fed into Syria to the north via Petra (in modern-day Jordan; figure 4) and west into Egypt itself.
Austronesians began to dominate the Indian Ocean during at the start of the Iron Age (1000 to 600 BC). Before that, especially in the Bronze Age, Indians of the Harappan civilization dominated the Indian Ocean. But considering the oriental spices found in Hatshepsut's reign I do wonder how involved Austronesians were at that time. We have evidence that they were dominant in the sea trade in Southeast Asia.
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posted
Thor Heyerdahl suggested maritime relations between Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus valley already around 3000 BC. To prove that such travels where possible with the ship building technique that existed at that time he built a reed boat, named Tigris, to sail between the Indus valley, Mesopotamia and Egypt. Unfortunately, because of war and political unrest he could not finish his journey and as a protest he and his crew burned Tigris.
Possible Mesopotamia–Egypt trade routes from the 4th millennium BCE
Trade routes between Mesopotamia and the Indus would have been significantly shorter due to lower sea levels in the 3rd millennium BCE
Some Wiki entries about Mesopotamian - Egypt relations and about Mesopotamia Indus valley relations.
posted
Seems some trading networks over long distances existed already before the Bronze age. Thus they have now found that Baltic amber reached the Iberian peninsula already 5000 years ago. In the Bronze age it would reach many places in Southern Europe and other parts of the Mediterranean world.
quote: Abstract The occurrence of Baltic amber through Europe has traditionally been associated to the spread of the Bell Beaker culture during the 3rd millennium BC. In Iberia, this phenomenon is particularly noticeable in the southern half. Here we present an amber bead recovered in a Late Neolithic funerary cave (3634–3363 cal BC) from northeastern Iberia where more than 12 individuals had been buried. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy results of four samples revealed their complete resemblance with Baltic succinite reference spectra. Despite being a single bead, this finding provides the earliest evidence for the arrival of Baltic amber to the Mediterranean and Western Europe, before the Bell Beaker phenomenon and more than a millennium earlier than traditionally thought. This finding has implications for our understanding of early exchange networks of exotic materials, and their associated social structures.
posted
^ Yes, the article I cited about the Egyptian beads in Denmark also mentioned amber from the Baltic being used by Egyptians. Still, I notice there are gaps in material data for the Bronze Age Erythrean Periplus.
For example, we have a lot of evidence of trade from Mesopotamia in the Persian Gulf reaching into India and of course trade from Egypt to Punt but I have yet to find as ample evidence of trade from the Persian Gulf to Punt or Yemen. Unless you have found such data Archaeopteryx. Most of the data I found come from the Iron Age only.
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posted
I have not found much either, but I got this article about an inland route over the Arabic peninsula from the Arabic Gulf coast down to the southern parts of Saudi Arabia and probably into Yemen too
quote:Abstract There is a lacuna of knowledge on the inland trade routes across Bronze Age central Arabia, which this article seeks to fill based on new evidence from Wādī al-Fāw, Saudi Arabia. Contrary to a common belief that interior Southeast Arabia after the Holocene Humid Phase and until the domestication of the dromedary had turned desolate Badlands, this study offers documentation that during the early Bronze Age, a commercial corridor connected the Kingdom of Dilmun on the Arabian Gulf coast with the southern parts of Saudi Arabia, probably Yemen. Seals of Dilmun Type, Dilmun pottery and related burial praxis make up the gist of the evidence from Wādī al-Fāw. A dry mummification mound burial custom is possibly identified at al-Fāw and probably Taymāʾ, which contrasts the classic Dilmun mound burial custom. An attempt is made to reconstruct the most likely route that connected Dilmun and Wādī al-Fāw. The emergence around 2000 BC of this trade network, likely based on donkey trains, closely coincides with the rise of the Kingdom of Dilmun, but surprisingly also with a time when Arabia witnessed unusually arid conditions. Identification of this unexpected ancient corridor should profoundly affect how upcoming models consider linguistic, ideological, genetic, cultural and technological transmission across Bronze Age Arabia.
posted
^ Good find on those land routes, but the lacuna I was referring to was the actual maritime ports.
It was only in 1998 that a Bronze Age port of Yemen was discovered.
It was only ascertained just several years ago the general region in which Punt was located, but Punt itself has yet to be discovered let alone its sea ports.
And now unfortunately conflict in Yemen has prevented proper security and preservation of ancient sites there let alone the conducting of any further excavations, and military conflict in Eritrea is also hindering archaeology there! Shame.
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posted
Concerning ancient contacts between India and Mesopotamia there are also some genetic traces of such contacts. These traces are highlighted in a couple of studies
quote:Ancient DNA methodology was applied to analyse sequences extracted from freshly unearthed remains (teeth) of 4 individuals deeply deposited in slightly alkaline soil of the Tell Ashara (ancient Terqa) and Tell Masaikh (ancient Kar-Assurnasirpal) Syrian archaeological sites, both in the middle Euphrates valley. Dated to the period between 2.5 Kyrs BC and 0.5 Kyrs AD the studied individuals carried mtDNA haplotypes corresponding to the M4b1, M49 and/or M61 haplogroups, which are believed to have arisen in the area of the Indian subcontinent during the Upper Paleolithic and are absent in people living today in Syria. However, they are present in people inhabiting today’s Tibet, Himalayas, India and Pakistan. We anticipate that the analysed remains from Mesopotamia belonged to people with genetic affinity to the Indian subcontinent since the distribution of identified ancient haplotypes indicates solid link with populations from the region of South Asia-Tibet (Trans-Himalaya). They may have been descendants of migrants from much earlier times, spreading the clades of the macrohaplogroup M throughout Eurasia and founding regional Mesopotamian groups like that of Terqa or just merchants moving along trade routes passing near or through the region. None of the successfully identified nuclear alleles turned out to be ΔF508 CFTR, LCT-13910T or Δ32 CCR5.
quote:Recent analyses of ancient Mesopotamian mitochondrial genomes have suggested a genetic link between the Indian subcontinent and Mesopotamian civilization. There is no consensus on the origin of the ancient Mesopotamians. They may be descendants of migrants, who founded regional Mesopotamian groups like that of Terqa or they may be merchants who were involved in trans Mesopotamia trade. To identify the Indian source population showing linkage to the ancient Mesopotamians, we screened a total of 15,751 mitochondrial DNAs (11,432 from the literature and 4,319 from this study) representing all major populations of India. Our results although suggest that south India (Tamil Nadu) and northeast India served as the source of the ancient Mesopotamian mtDNA gene pool, mtDNA of these ancient Mesopotamians probably contributed by Tamil merchants who were involved in the Indo-Roman trade.
posted
I was having a conversation on another forum about dragon myths, and I want to suggest that Bronze Age commercial connections might have facilitated their spread from what I suspect is a North African source.
I haven't found photos of it anywhere online yet, but there is a predynastic Egyptian bowl from ~4000 BC that shows what may be Apep fighting a prototype of Ra. The battle between Apep and Ra differs from the traditional Indo-European chaoskamp in that Ra is a solar god instead of a thunder god, but he nonetheless does have help from Set who is sometimes associated with desert storms. It could be that the Egyptian story of Apep and Ra diffused to western Asia, inspiring the stories of Leviathan and Tiamat and so on, and these in turn spread north to the Eurasian steppes where they would give rise to the ancestral chaoskamp and then the medieval tales of knights versus dragons.
West Africa has at least one version of its own of the hero-versus-dragon myth, but its consequences are more tragic and reflect less well on the hero. The "dragon" is a seven-headed snake named Bida who offers rains of gold to the Soninke people of Wagadu (aka "ancient Ghana") in exchange for sacrificial brides. The hero is a guy who wants the latest sacrificial offering for himself, and so he goes to slay Bida. Once he does, the people of Wagadu suffer from drought and poverty, and the kingdom collapses.
A lot of different cultures around the world could have independently invented the trope of a hero fighting a giant reptile, since our ancestors would have had to put up with dangerous reptiles ever since they clung to the trees during the Mesozoic Era. Still, I fancy that there might be a distant link between the Bida and Apep stories. Perhaps they inherited the trope from the pre-desertification Sahara, or it spread between the Nile and Niger river basins as a result of subsequent trade connections.
posted
There is a famous depiction of a tiger and a dragon made of clam shells from a tomb in Xishuipo in Henan (China) which is dated to c 4500 BC. It belongs to a Chinese neolithic culture called the Yangshao.
At least later Chinese dragons are depicted as more benevolent than the Western dragons. It is of course hard to tell if there is a common ancestry between the eastern and western dragons. Some have proposed that fossil teeth and skeletal parts of ancient animals can have inspired the myths of dragons together with tales about living animals like big snakes and maybe crocodilians.
quote:Xishuipo (Chinese: 西水坡; Pinyin: Xīshuǐpō) is a Neolithic site in Puyang, Henan, central China, associated with the Yangshao culture. The site was excavated from 1987 to 1988; 186 burials were discovered at the site.
In one of the burials, tomb M45, the body of a tall adult male was flanked by two mosaics formed from white clam shells, a tiger design to the right, and a dragon design to the left. Clam shell mosaics were also found in two nearby caches. The burial was accompanied by the bodies of three young children. Some archaeologists believe that the man was a shaman.
posted
^ The concept of a primordial reptilian creature of power is one that is universal and spans almost all cultures around the world from the most isolated tribes to the most imperial nations. So while there may have been far reaching contacts between ancient cultures I wouldn't dare say one culture is the originator of the dragon. The Egyptian concept of Apep and other serpents differs from the Sumerian mushmaḫu which was a large serpent with leonine torso and legs like raptors. The Greek concept of the drako like the Egyptians was simply gigantic serpents associated with the powers of the earth. The famous 'Western' dragons we are familiar with are creatures with the power of fire and air that have large wings while the wingless 'Oriental' dragons have the power of water and lightning. Southeast Asian dragons differ from northeast ones in that the former have a single rhinoceros like horn growing out of their snout while the latter has antlers.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: Concerning ancient contacts between India and Mesopotamia there are also some genetic traces of such contacts. These traces are highlighted in a couple of studies
quote:Ancient DNA methodology was applied to analyse sequences extracted from freshly unearthed remains (teeth) of 4 individuals deeply deposited in slightly alkaline soil of the Tell Ashara (ancient Terqa) and Tell Masaikh (ancient Kar-Assurnasirpal) Syrian archaeological sites, both in the middle Euphrates valley. Dated to the period between 2.5 Kyrs BC and 0.5 Kyrs AD the studied individuals carried mtDNA haplotypes corresponding to the M4b1, M49 and/or M61 haplogroups, which are believed to have arisen in the area of the Indian subcontinent during the Upper Paleolithic and are absent in people living today in Syria. However, they are present in people inhabiting today’s Tibet, Himalayas, India and Pakistan. We anticipate that the analysed remains from Mesopotamia belonged to people with genetic affinity to the Indian subcontinent since the distribution of identified ancient haplotypes indicates solid link with populations from the region of South Asia-Tibet (Trans-Himalaya). They may have been descendants of migrants from much earlier times, spreading the clades of the macrohaplogroup M throughout Eurasia and founding regional Mesopotamian groups like that of Terqa or just merchants moving along trade routes passing near or through the region. None of the successfully identified nuclear alleles turned out to be ΔF508 CFTR, LCT-13910T or Δ32 CCR5.
quote:Recent analyses of ancient Mesopotamian mitochondrial genomes have suggested a genetic link between the Indian subcontinent and Mesopotamian civilization. There is no consensus on the origin of the ancient Mesopotamians. They may be descendants of migrants, who founded regional Mesopotamian groups like that of Terqa or they may be merchants who were involved in trans Mesopotamia trade. To identify the Indian source population showing linkage to the ancient Mesopotamians, we screened a total of 15,751 mitochondrial DNAs (11,432 from the literature and 4,319 from this study) representing all major populations of India. Our results although suggest that south India (Tamil Nadu) and northeast India served as the source of the ancient Mesopotamian mtDNA gene pool, mtDNA of these ancient Mesopotamians probably contributed by Tamil merchants who were involved in the Indo-Roman trade.
In regards to India's seafaring history, Harappan culture was very much maritime in contrast to Vedic culture which distrusted the sea and preferred riverine sailing. In the Classical Period, most of the maritime was conducted by Dravidian speaking South Indians like the Tamil and Malayali.
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: In regards to India's seafaring history, Harappan culture was very much maritime in contrast to Vedic culture which distrusted the sea and preferred riverine sailing. In the Classical Period, most of the maritime was conducted by Dravidian speaking South Indians like the Tamil and Malayali.
A lot of people assume the Harappans were early Dravidian-speakers. I think it's hard to say for sure, since the Indus Valley script remains untranslated, but the maritime affinity is something Harappans and later Dravidians shared as you observed. Also, while we don't have a lot of Harappan genomes yet, the current samples' mix of AASI/Iranian hunter-gatherer ancestry does seem similar to that of modern southern Indians IIRC.
posted
^ You're right. There are already too many similarities as it is but we won't know for certain until the Harappan script is translated. Suffice to say, there was a language decryption algorithmic program which computed that there is a high percentage the Harappan script was conveying a Dravidian language.
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posted
Another weird mythological parallel I just noticed is that Egyptian, Greek, and Norse mythologies all have hunting goddesses associated with archery (Neith, Artemis, and Skadi respectively). I suppose it could just be coincidence, but it's an odd coincidence that the three ancient pantheons best known to the modern Western public all have goddesses with that specific motif.
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