In our opinion, the Arabians were the first
who introduced Indian productions into the west from the earliest period to
which history goes back, and they continued to supply the merchants who
traded on the Red Sea with them, till, by the discovery of the monsoon, a
direct communication was opened between that sea and India.
At least seventeen centuries before the Christian era, we have undoubted
evidence of the traffic of the Arabians in the spices, &c. of India; for in
the 27th chapter of Genesis we learn, that the Ishmaelites from Gilead
conducted a caravan of camels laden with the spices of India, and the
balsam and myrrh of Hadraumaut, in the regular course of traffic to Egypt
for sale. In the 30th chapter of Exodus, cinnamon, cassia, myrrh,
frankincense, &c. are mentioned, some of which are the exclusive produce of
India; these were used for religious purposes, but at the same time the
quantities of them specified are so great, that it is evident they must
have been easily obtained. Spices are mentioned, along with balm and other
productions of Canaan, in the present destined by Jacob for Joseph. These
testimonies from holy writ are perfectly in unison with what we learn from
Herodotus; this author enumerates oriental spices as regularly used in
Egypt for embalming the dead.
It is sufficiently evident, therefore, that, at a very early period, the
productions of India were imported into Egypt.
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