Artifact Box - Item D
Pleripus Maris Erythraei
Sometime in the middle of the first century A.D. an anonymous merchant or
sailor compiled a guidebook to the ports and sailing conditions of the Erythraean
Sea. Known as the Pleripus Maris Erythraei ("Guide-book of the
Erythraean Sea") it is the only document of its kind known to have survived.
The regions we know as the Gulf of Aden, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean
were called the Erythraean Sea by ancient geographers, sailors, and travelers.
In the translation below, the author refers to India's Malabar coast where
large ships came:
. . .because of the volume and quantity of pepper and malabathron (a form of cinnamon), they (the ports of southwestern India) offer a market for: mainly a great amount of money clothing with no adornment, in limited quantity multicolored textiles sulphide of antimony; coral raw glass copper, tin, lead, wine, in limited quantity
They export pepper, good supplies of fine quality pearl; ivory; Chinese cloth; nard from the Ganges area; malabathron brought from the interior; all kinds of transparent gems; diamonds; sapphires; tortoise shell.
Excerpt from Pleripus Maris Erythraei
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