Alexandria: Spice Entrepot
Alexandria was founded in 331 BCE by Alexander the Great. Its position in the Nile delta enabled it to thrive and in due course it became the second greatest city of the ancient Mediterranean, after Rome.
After Alexander it became the capital of the Ptolemies, and it built its wealth on trade. Shortly after the Roman annexation, Alexandria probably had a population of a few hundred thousand and functioned as the granary of Rome, exporting around 83,000 tons of grain/year at the height of the empire.125 It was also the main emporium for the aromatic and pungent spices of India and elsewhere, before onward distribution to Rome. This, combined with all the other merchant activity, involved a huge number of ships, and the constant coming and going from multiple Mediterranean ports made the wharves and dockyards bustling centres of commerce.Strabo, noting its good harbours and position on the Nile, described Alexandria as:
the greatest emporium in the inhabited world … Large fleets are despatched as far as India and the extremities of Aethiopia, from which the most valuable cargoes are brought to Aegypt, and thence sent forth again to the other regions; so that double duties are collected, on both imports and exports …126
The Emporion was situated near the western end of the Great Harbour – here duties on imports and exports were collected and it served as the market for commodities moving through the port. This was the main market in the empire for spices, perfumes, unguents, medicines and other exotic goods and a large variety of agricultural produce.
The Alexandrian Tariff of Marcus Aurelius (issued 176–180 CE) listed fifty-four commodities subject to import duty at Alexandria en route to Rome. These included spices, e.g. amomum, cardamom and pepper. The list was repeated in the sixth-century CE Justinian’s Digest:
cinnamon; long pepper; white pepper; pentasphaerum leaf; barbary leaf; costum; costamomum; nard; stachys; Tyrian casia; casia-wood; myrrh; amomum; ginger; malabrathrum; Indic spice; galbanurn; asafoetida juice; aloe; lycium; Persian gum; Arabian onyx; cardamonurn; cinnamon-wood; cotton goods; Babylonian hides; Persian hides; ivory; Indian iron; linen; all sorts of gem: pearl, sardonyx, ceraunium, hyacinth stone, emerald, diamond, sapphire, turquoise, beryl, tortoise stone; Indian or Assyrian drugs; raw silk; silk or half-silk clothing; embroidered fine linen; silk thread; Indian eununchs; lions; lionesses; pards; leopards; panthers; purple dye; also: Moroccan wool; dye; Indian hair.
Note that black pepper is exempt from this list, probably due to its continuing popularity.
Alexandria fell firstly to the Persians in 619 CE, though it was recovered ten years later, and finally in 641 CE following a long siege by Ummayad Arabs. Life and commerce were to continue, but the city’s golden age had passed. The great lighthouse of Pharos collapsed in the fourteenth century. However, the city continued to exert significant influence during the medieval era, encouraged by the Mamluk sultanate (1250–1517), and spices and other goods re-exported from Egypt brought in considerable wealth.