History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce, Volume 1 (of 4)

by W. S. Lindsay

Commerce.

Egypt under the Pharaohs was almost entirely an agricultural country; commerce and manufactures (excepting in the case of cloths of various descriptions) were neglected. With a soil of unexampled richness, annually renewed by the Nile floods, the Egyptians acted wisely in devoting their attention chiefly to the development of their own vast natural resources.

The paintings on the walls of their tombs, and other monuments, suffice to show the attention the early population paid to agricultural pursuits; for there was obviously no higher tribute to the memory of a deceased landowner than to represent him overlooking his labourers in the field, cultivating the soil, or reaping, and carrying, in nets and baskets, the produce to the thrashing floor. In fact, apart from the records of Herodotus, valuable as they undoubtedly are, the monuments furnish a great amount of information, with regard to the state and progress of the arts and sciences among this ancient people. To measure and to calculate the fitting seasons for their various religious ceremonies, they observed, with much accuracy, the courses of the heavenly bodies, especially those of the sun and stars; at the same time keeping a careful registry of their movements, little, if at all, inferior to that of the Chaldæans. But while a practical acquaintance with geometry was a necessity to the men who constructed the Pyramids and the great dams and dykes required for the complete utilizing of the periodical inundations of the Nile, the study of this exact science was still more stimulated by the mechanism necessary to enable them to transport from the quarries the enormous blocks of stone of which the Pyramids and temples were constructed, some of these having to be brought for more than five hundred miles. Such works could not have failed to demand considerable mechanical invention.

Nor indeed is this all. Remains still existing show that the Egyptians were well skilled in the use of metals, and in their application to delicate as well as rough work. The paintings in the tombs, and abundant drawings preserved on the Egyptian papyri, demonstrate also their knowledge of at least the elementary branches of the Fine Arts; while their colossal statues exhibit great power in the working of sculptures in a very hard and untractable material.

Sesostris.

During the earliest periods there is no record of any large vessels having been in use, for those employed for the conveyance of the huge blocks of stone from the quarries were doubtless rather rafts or barges than boats. In the reign, however, of Rameses II. (the Sesostris of the Greeks) we hear of vessels of large dimensions; these, however, it is most likely were all of Phœnician origin, and simply hired for use during his foreign expeditions. Prodigious sculptured memorials of this king exist all over Egypt, and there is still a curious relief of him at the Nahr el Kelb near Beyrût, which was seen by Herodotus.[153] Tacitus[154] further tells us that others were shown to Germanicus when in Egypt. It is not necessary here to discuss the vexed question of the conquests of Sesostris; it is enough to suggest that, in whatever extensive expeditions by sea he may have been engaged, he was indebted to the Phœnicians for his fleet—and that, by their agency if at all, he was able to destroy “the Khairetans of the sea and the Tokhari” (probably the Cretans and Carians), nautical races, who, from the mythical till the commencement of the historical period, were highly esteemed by the Greeks for their skill as sailors. A figure discovered by the Rev. G. C. Renouard, and engraved in Texier’s “Asie Mineure”[155] is almost certainly the Sesostris of Herodotus. It is on the highway from Sardes to Smyrna, but the inscriptions on it are no longer legible.

Naucratis.

There seems no reason to suppose that the native population of Egypt was at any time of its history accustomed to nautical pursuits. As the Phœnicians supplied the navy of Sesostris, so other foreign shipping were engaged in the later times of Egyptian history. Hence it was that the famous port of Naucratis was founded on the Canopic mouth of the Nile, foreign merchants and sailors being restricted to this and to one or two other places: a practice recalling the custom of the Chinese up to a very recent period. Herodotus says that the abodes of these foreign settlers were generally called “Camps;”[156] and gives some details which show how jealously the Egyptians provided against the advent of strangers to any but the one port of Naucratis. “There was,” he says, “no other in Egypt for them” (the merchants). “If a merchant or a ship-owner entered any other branch of the Nile than that of the Canopic mouth, he was compelled to swear he had come there against his will through stress of weather; and he was required to sail in his own ship to the Canopic mouth, or to have his cargo transported in barges, should the winds prove adverse, round the Delta, to the factory at the port of Naucratis, which had an exclusive privilege.”[157]

In the reign of Amasis (B.C. 556) special privileges were granted to the Greeks by that king, with protection to those who made Naucratis their place of abode; while for those who did not care to reside there permanently, but were simply sea-faring traders, he appropriated sites for temples and altars to their gods, and sanctuaries where their lives and properties would at all times be secure. But these privileges seem to have been restricted to the Greeks; for when another nation claimed a similar protection, Herodotus[158] simply remarks that “they claim what does not belong to them.”

Thus the Greeks became the sole agents and ship brokers through whom business could be transacted at Naucratis, and, though at first reluctantly admitted within its sacred soil, they, in the end, largely aided in promoting the wealth and prosperity of Egypt. The merchandise imported by them gave rise to new fashions and new wants, and by degrees, the introduction of Greek manners and customs produced an influence over nearly the whole of Egypt, and prevailed in spite of numerous revolutions throughout the rule of the Persians till the time of Alexander the Great.