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There was a considerable demand for Babylonian carpets, and other manufactures of the East; but the most important and unpopular branch of foreign trade was carried on with Arabia and India. Every year, about the time of the summer solstice, a fleet of a hundred and twenty vessels sailed from Myos-hormos, a port of Egypt, on the Red Sea.
Still later, in consideration of the dangers attending the port of Myos-Hormos, on account of flats and islands, Philadelphus sent an army into Troglodytica, where he constructed a haven called Berenice, in which the ships engaged in the Indian commerce took shelter, as a place of greater security.
The goods from Europe, by his orders, were carried up the Nile from Alexandria to the city of Coptus, and conveyed across the desert from thence to the sea-port of Myos-Hormos on the Red-sea . To avoid the excessive heat, the caravans travelled only in the night, directing their course by the stars; and water being very scarce in the desert, they had to carry a sufficient quantity with them for the journey.
The ships set sail every year from Myos-Hormos about the middle of July, and returned back within the year . The merchandize they carried amounted to the value of one million two hundred thousand crowns; and the returns were an hundred for one; and through this prodigious increase of wealth, the matrons and noble ladies of those days in Alexandria, were exceedingly profuse in decorating themselves with purple, pearls, and precious stones, and in the use of musk, amber, and other rich perfumes of various kinds; of all which the historians and other writers of that age treat at great length .
From thence the goods were transported to the city of Coptus, and afterwards to Alexandria, which became rich and famous, through its trade with India, beyond any other city in the world; insomuch that it is asserted that the customs of Alexandria yielded every year to Ptolemy Auletes, the father of Cleopatra, seven millions and a half of gold, though the traffic had then scarcely subsisted in that direction for twenty years . After the reduction of Egypt and Alexandria under the power of the Romans, the customs are said to have advanced to double that amount; and the trade was so great, that 120 ships used to be sent yearly from Myos-Hormos to India.
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