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It appears that in the age of Agatharcides, the monopoly of the trade between India and Europe by this route was wholly possessed by the Sabeans; that, in order to evade the effects of this monopoly, the Greeks of Egypt found their way to Aden and Hadraumaut, in Arabia, and to Mosullon on the coast of Africa.
At least seventeen centuries before the Christian era, we have undoubted evidence of the traffic of the Arabians in the spices, &c. of India; for in the 27th chapter of Genesis we learn, that the Ishmaelites from Gilead conducted a caravan of camels laden with the spices of India, and the balsam and myrrh of Hadraumaut, in the regular course of traffic to Egypt for sale.
The evidence of the land trade between Arabia and India, from a very early period, is equally clear and decisive: Petra, the capital of Arabia Petrea, was the centre of this trade. To it the caravans, in all ages, came from Minea, in the interior of Arabia, and from Gherra, in the Gulf of Persia, from Hadraumaut, on the Ocean, and some even from Sabaea.
The exact site of the country of the Mineans cannot be certainly fixed; but it is probable that it was to the south of Hedjaz, to the north of Hadraumaut, and to the eastward of Sabaea. According to Strabo, their caravans passed in seventy days from Hadraumaut to Aisla, which was within ten miles of Petra. They were laden with aloes, gold, myrrh, frankincense, and other aromatics.
The traditions of the Arabians coincide with the genealogy of the Scriptures, in regarding Joktan, the fourth son of Shem, as the origin of those trihes which occupied Sabæa and Hadraumaut, or the incense country; Ishmael as the father of the families which settled in Arabia Deserta; and Edom as the ancestor of the Idumeans, who settled in Arabia Petræa.
From the earliest period that history begins to notice them, Sabæa, Hadraumaut, and Oman, are described as the residences of navigators; and as these places are, in the earliest historians, celebrated for their maritime commerce, it is reasonable to suppose that they were equally so before the ancient historians acquired any knowledge of them.
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