It may be proper
to add, that in the extracts from Agatharcides, given by Photius, it is
expressly mentioned that ships from India were met with by the Egyptian
ships in the ports of Sabaea. The particulars of this trade between India
and Egypt, by means of the Arabians, will be afterwards detailed, and its
great antiquity traced and proved; at present we have alluded to it merely
to bear us out in our position, that Indian ships, laden with Indian
commodities, frequenting the ports of Sabaea, and those ports being
described by Agatharcides as the limits of his knowledge of this coast of
the Red Sea, we are fully justified in concluding, that, in the reign of
Philometor, there was not only no direct trade to India, but no inducement
to such trade; and that 146 years after the death of Alexander, the Greek
sovereigns of Egypt had done little to complete what that monarch had
projected, and in part accomplished by the navigation of Nearchus--the
communication by sea between Alexandria and India.
Under the successors of Philometor, the trade in the Red Sea languished
rather than increased, and the full benefits of it were not reaped till
some time after the Roman conquest. Even in the time of Strabo, the bulk of
the trade still passed by Coptus to Myos Hormos. We are aware of a passage
in this author, which, at first, sight seems to contradict the position we
have laid down, and to prove, that at least in his time, there was a direct
and not unfrequent navigation between the Red Sea and India.
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