Appendix 12 - Ormuz: a lost kingdom

Summary

Of all the Seleucid satrapies Carmania is the least known; it seems to have no history. Strabo (xv, 726) has scarcely a word more recent than Onesicritus and Nearchus; his notices of the mines and the gold-bearing river are explicitly ascribed to Onesicritus; the head-hunters might be new, but as they come between references to Onesicritus and to Nearchus they are probably taken from one of them. Except for some names in Ptolemy, the only writer with any new information is Pliny in book vi, and it can be isolated by first taking out the old information. The mines and the goldbearing river (vi, 98) are from Onesicritus, as a comparison with Strabo xv, 726 shows; the distance (ib.) of the crossing from the ‘promontory’ of Carmania (Cape Jask) to Macae (Ras Mussendam) in Arabia is shown by the name Macae to come from Nearchus, though Pliny's ‘five miles’ must be a corruption, for it is neither the actual distance nor Nearchus' ‘one day's voyage’. The statement (vi, 110) that beyond the ‘promontory’ are the Harmozaei is from Nearchus.

Deducting these passages, and omitting for the moment vi, 152, Pliny's information later than Onesicritus and Nearchus is as follows.