Early Contacts with Ptolemaic Egypt and the Early Imports

CHAPTER FOUR

EARLY CONTACTS WITH PTOLEMAIC EGYPT AND THE EARLY IMPORTS

Do not despise our colour, for we are whiter and more brilliant in our souls than the whitest among your people.1 According to the Alexander Romance, the queen of Meroe wrote the following to the Macedonian conqueror of Egypt: Queen Candace of Meroe and the rulers subject to her greet King Alex- ander [. . .] My ambassadors are bringing you 100 ingots of solid gold, 500 Aithiopian youths, 200 parrots, 200 apes, and for our god Ammon, protector of the Egyptian frontier, a crown of emeralds and unpierced pearls, 10 chains bearing seals <. . .> 80 ivory cascets. The species of wild beasts sent by us are 350 elephants, 300 leopards, 80 rhinoceroses, 4 panthers, 90 man-eating dogs in cages, 300 fighting-bulls, 90 elephant tusks, 300 leopards skins, 1500 staffs of ebony.2 Though the alleged correspondence between Alexander the Great and “Queen Candace” of Meroe3 in Pseudo-Callisthenes’ Alexander Romance has no relation to historical fact, the gifts in the above quota- tion are well known items which are figuring in textual and pictorial lists of Nubian “tributes” arriving in Egypt ever since the Middle Kingdom. As we have seen in Chapter III.1.3, one of the Nubian offering bearers in Petosiris’s late fourth century BC tomb walks with an elephant: we have here a newly created iconographical type re-formulating the old Egyptian association of Nubia with the elephant and elephant ivory. While it may be supposed that Queen Candace’s letter belongs to the sections of the Romance, which were written in early Hellenistic Alex- andria4 and that it relies on a record of actual imports from Meroe,

1 Queen Candace to Alexander the Great, Ps.-Callisthenes, Alexander Romance 3.18.5, FHN II No. 85, trans. T. Hägg. 2 Ps.-Callisthenes, Alexander Romance 3.18.5, FHN II No. 85, trans. T. Hägg. 3 For the title Candace, see p. 19. 4 R. Stoneman: The Alexander Romance: From History to Fiction. in: J.R. Morgan – R. Stoneman (eds): The Greek Novel in Context. London – New York 1994 117–129; T. Hägg in: FHN II 503 f. 100 chapter four we cannot tell how realistic the quantities listed in the letter may be. According to Herodotus, the Kushites had delivered to Cambyses every second year, and still deliver in my [Herodotus’] time, two choini- kes of unrefined gold, two hundred logs of ebony, five Aithiopian boys, and twenty great elephant tusks.5 Though the Persian evidence for the Kushite deliveries6 depicts a vas- sal obliged to pay tribute, the reality was probably commercial/gift exchange, just like the exchange between Hellenistic Egypt and Meroe in periods of peaceful diplomatic relations. The materials stored in the enormous magazine building discovered at Sanam opposite Napata give an idea of the dimensions of royal redistribution. The large quan- tity of raw elephant tusks, faience and calcite (or travertine)7 objects, gemstones, copper alloy, and the clay sealings with the names of Piankhy, Shabaqo, Taharqo, Senkamanisken, Anlamani and Aspelta recovered from the magazines indicate that gifts, revenues, and commercial wares arrived here from great distances and were stored under the supervision of the royal administration.8 Meroitic period buildings probably of a similar function were identified at Meroe City, Faras, and Karanog.9 Greek luxury wares arrived in the court of Kush from the begin- ning of Egypt’s first Persian domination (525–404 BC), as a sherd from an Attic black-figure kylix from Meroe City indicates.10 The pas- sage of Herodotus11 where the historian presents a realistic descrip- tion of Aithiopian warriors originating from the southern confines of

5 Herodotus 3.97.3, FHN I No. 57, trans. T. Eide. Thechoinix was a Greek measure, the Attic choinix was the equivalent of 1.1 litre. 6 R.[G.] Morkot: Nubia and Achaemenid Persia: Sources and Problems. in: H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg – A. Kuhrt (eds): Asia Minor and Egypt: Old Cultures in a New Empire. Proceedings of the Groningen 1988 Achaemenid History Workshop. Achaemenid History IV. Leiden 1991 321–336. 7 Formerly known as Egyptian alabaster. 8 For the excavations at the so-called “Treasury” of Sanam, see Griffith 1922; for more recent fieldwork at the site, see I. Vincentelli: Some Clay Sealings from Sanam Abu Dom. in: B. Gratien (ed.): Mélanges offerts à Francis Geus (CRIPEL 26 [2006– 2007]). Lille 2007 371–378. 9 Meroe City, building M 740: Török 1997b 179 ff.; Faras, “Western Palace”: F.Ll. Griffith: Oxford Excavations in Nubia XL–XLII. Meroitic Antiquities at Faras and Other Sites. LAAA 13 (1926) 17–37 21 ff.; Karanog, “Castle”: C.L. Woolley: Karanòg. The Town. Philadelphia 1911 15 ff. 10 Shinnie – Anderson (eds) 2004 fig. 94; J.W. Hayes in: Shinnie – Anderson (eds) 2004 213. 11 Herodotus 7.67, FHN II No. 58.