The Tour of the sea Érythrée

The Périple of the sea Érythrée (often quoted under its Latin title Periplus Husbands Erythraei by convenience) is a “Périple” (account) maritime written in Greek describing commercial navigation and opportunities since the ports romano-Egyptians like Bérénice along the coast of the Red Sea, then called sea Érythrée , and others along the Eastern Africa and of the India.

One dates it today generally from first half of the 1st century. Although the author is unknown, its reading indicates that it is about a first hand description of familiar of this geographical area and an almost single source of information concerning the ancient world in the areas which border the Indian Ocean. Indeed, although sea Érythrée is the ancient Greek denomination of the Red Sea, the text includes the description of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf.

Work is composed of sixty-six chapters, the majority of them consisting of a long paragraph. The first part, chapters one to eighteen, described the sea routes along the North-South axis since the Egypt along the coast of Africa until what probably corresponds to current the Tanzania. The remainder of the text follows a West-east axis, since the Egypt, while making it tower of the Arabic Péninsule and the Persian Gulf until the Malabar Coast. The short chapter fifty four, for example, known as in its totality:

Tyndis belongs to the kingdom of Cerobothra; it is a quite visible village since the sea. Muziris, of the same kingdom, abounds in the ships sent here with cargoes from Arabia and by the Greeks; the city is located on a river, moved away from Tyndis of five hundred stages per river and sea, and by going up the river of twenty stages since the shore. Nelcynda is distant from Muziris by the river and the sea of approximately five hundred stages, and belongs to another kingdom, that of the Pandyan. This place is also located on a river, at approximately a hundred and twenty stages of the mer.

In a great number of cases, description is sufficiently precise to be able to identify the corresponding current sites, while for others, the assumptions are very numerous. For example, the place called “Rhapta” is mentioned as being the most remote market along the African coast “of Azania”; researchers recognized at least five places corresponding to description, in a zone extending from the south of Tanga to the delta of river Rufiji. The description of the Indian coast mentions the Gange completely clearly, then the tour loses much in precision, describing the China as a “interior big city Thina” which is a source of rough Soie. Another characteristic of the Tour is that certain words describing the goods do not appear in any other text of the ancient literature, kind to make conjectures about their significance.

The text currently exploited drift of a Byzantine manuscript of the 10th century pertaining to the funds of the college library of Heidelberg and of a copy of this one dating from pertaining to the British Museum. The Tour knew its first modern edition by Sigismund Gelenius in 1553.

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