Explaining how India was a key trading partner of the Roman Empire, historian and author William Dalrymple said only one container of Indian luxury items would have made one “the Elon Musk of Alexandria”.
In an interview with Times of India, Dalrymple said traders didn’t need much thought about bringing in the goods as a single shipment could yield enough profit to purchase vast estates or secure political influence. However, according to Dalrymple, Roman author and philosopher Pliny the Elder was not too happy.
“He’s (Pliny’s) sitting there hearing about decadent ladies in Rome who used this new-fangled foreign textile called silk. You could see their limbs through this (it).. unnecessary and expensive. ‘This is what happens to our gold. These women spend it on silk... This other new black powder (black pepper) that people are putting on their food. It gives food a certain pungency (but) what’s wrong with olive oil,” Dalrymple told TOI.
Dalrymple said India exported luxury goods such as ivory, pepper, silk, cotton, and aromatic products like nard (Himalayan product used in perfumery) that were highly coveted in Rome. According to him, the Muziris Papyrus, a Greek document, details the immense value of these goods.
“It (Muziris Papyrus) is a complete, detailed shipping invoice and gives an incredibly detailed account of one container travelling on one ship, The Hermapolon, that happened to leave India in the mid 1st Century AD,” Dalrymple said.
He said the container contained two tonnes of ivory, which was the highest-value product, vast quantities of pepper, silk, cotton and nard. “All these things were luxury objects you didn’t need from India,” Dalrymple told TOI.
According to the historian, the Muziris Papyrus also provided exact prices of the stuff that was ferried in one container. Dalrymple said the most surprising thing was the cost. "If this one container did make it safely to Alexandria, then the importer would have had enough money to buy the largest estate in Egypt or Central Tuscany and enough spare change to join the Senate. One container would have made you the Elon Musk of Alexandria. We have no notion of whether it actually was dispatched or arrived, just that we have the invoice,” he told TOI.
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