Film
The Incense Road
750 BCE – 600 CE
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Around 750 BCE, a provincial governor on the Euphrates recorded a complaint in stone: a caravan had crossed his land without paying. It is the oldest surviving record of a caravan out of the interior of Arabia, and the first thing history tells us about the trade is that a man with soldiers took his share of it.
The cargo was aromatic resin, frankincense and myrrh, grown in a narrow band of country at the southern rim of the peninsula and burned in the temples of the whole ancient world. This is the history of the road that carried it, across thirteen centuries. The cargo changed, the ports changed, the kingdoms and the gods changed. The road remained, and it remained taxed.
Sources
- Nigel Groom, Frankincense and Myrrh: A Study of the Arabian Incense Trade
- Robert G. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam
- Lionel Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text with Introduction, Translation and Commentary
- David Peacock and David Williams (eds), Food for the Gods: New Light on the Ancient Incense Trade
- Alessandra Avanzini, Khor Rori Report 2: A Port in Arabia between Rome and the Indian Ocean
- Alexander V. Sedov, on the excavation of Qana
- Ingo Strauch (ed.), Foreign Sailors on Socotra: The Inscriptions and Drawings from the Cave Hoq
- Eivind Heldaas Seland, on Indian Ocean trade and the Periplus ports
- Alessandro de Maigret, on the Sabaean caravan trade
- Jérémie Schiettecatte, on South Arabian urbanism and the caravan cities
- Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, and her later revision of it
- Christian Julien Robin, studies in South Arabian epigraphy
- Grant Frame, Rulers of Babylonia (RIMB 2), for the Suhu inscriptions
- A. Cavigneaux and B. K. Ismail, on the governors of Suhu, Baghdader Mitteilungen 21
- With the work of the Yemeni and Omani epigraphic and archaeological missions
Primary sources
- Ninurta-kudurri-usur 02, the annals of the governor of Suhu, column iv, via oracc.org
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History, on the incense route and its charges
- The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
- Strabo, Geography, on the ships sailing for India from Egypt
- The annals of Tiglath-Pileser III, on the Arab queen Shamsi
- The inscriptions of Karib'il Watar at Sirwah
- Ir 13, Sabaic inscription, on the raid against Qana
- CIS IV 540, the Maʾrib dam repair inscription, AD 455
- Abraha's dam inscription at Marib, AD 548, on the five embassies
- The Martyrdom of Arethas, on the fleet of 525
- The Latin inscriptions of the Farasan islands
- The inscriptions and drawings of the cave at Hoq, Socotra
- Later Arabic historical tradition, cited as tradition throughout
Image sources
Images from Wikimedia Commons, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Walters Art Museum, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, and the British Library, under Creative Commons and open-access licences. Full per-image credits appear at the end of the film.