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The Role of Boats in Ancient Trade and Commerce
A comparison of the cargoes, ports and ship types that carried trade across Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Aegean and the wider Mediterranean in the ancient world.
Origins and Exploration
Ancient Trade and Voyages
Cargoes and expeditions of the earliest maritime civilizations.
Ancient Egyptian Maritime Expeditions
State-sponsored Egyptian voyages, especially the Land of Punt expedition under Hatshepsut, what the ships brought back and what the evidence does and does not show.
Ancient Egyptian Maritime Trade
The goods and institutions behind Egyptian shipping: Nile grain, Lebanese cedar, Nubian gold, and the temples and palace that owned and ran many of the boats.
Ancient Egyptian Maritime Trade Routes
The actual routes of Egyptian shipping: the Nile, the Mediterranean coast to Byblos, and Red Sea ports such as Mersa Gawasis, with the evidence for each.
Ancient Greek Maritime Expeditions
Greek colonising voyages across the Mediterranean and Black Sea, and exploratory trips such as Pytheas of Massalia to the north, with the evidence and its limits.
Ancient Greek Maritime Trade
How Greek sea trade worked: grain imports for Athens, the amphora trade in wine and oil, maritime loans and the role of the Piraeus as the main port.
Ancient Mesopotamian Maritime Expeditions
How Mesopotamian rulers sent and received voyages down the Gulf to Dilmun, Magan and Meluhha, and what cuneiform inscriptions and administrative records say.
Ancient Mesopotamian Maritime Trade
The Gulf trade in copper, timber and stone linking Sumer, Dilmun and the Indus region, with the merchants, records and archaeology that document it.
Related topics
More in origins and exploration
Ancient Shipbuilding How early peoples built hulls and rigs. Exploration and Empire Ships of discovery, piracy, survey and the industrial age. Polar and Scientific Voyages Ships sent to the ice and to the unmapped deep. Trading Companies and Sea Routes Chartered companies and the routes that linked continents.