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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2002
Demand for scents, spices and comparable products from India and further east was a major incentive for the naval expeditions which led, after 1497 AD, to the creation of European empires in the Orient. There was the same demand in the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East, to which these goods travelled through the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf. People in Egypt and Babylonia in the classical period were both middlemen and consumers, and this paper draws attention to the existence of a few alabaster jars that reflect the trade. They are mainly in the Department of the Ancient Near East at the British Museum (previously called the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities), and are inscribed in Babylonian or Greek with the names of scents or spices. While these inscriptions are unusual, perhaps many more jars were once inscribed in ink which is no longer visible.