Aspects of Trade on the Judaean Coast in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods
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ARAM, 8 (1996), 101-109 101 ASPECTS OF TRADE ON THE JUDAEAN COAST IN THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PERIODS JOAN M. FRAYN The aspects of Judaean trade on which I would like to comment are first, the effects on trade of the nature of the coastline and its ports, secondly the rela- tion between the road system and the ports. The third point concerns the pro- portion of trade bound for Egypt and the western Mediterranean which was carried by sea in comparison with that which travelled over land. In discussing this we shall have to pay some attention to the seasonal nature of the coasting trade and of the supply of agricultural produce. Moving south along the Mediterranean coast we find: Ptolemais or Akko, Dora, Caesarea, Jaffa, Ashkelon and Gaza. This is a low-lying sandy coast, with few natural havens, but there is no doubt that each of these towns in its time offered harbour facilities to coasting vessels. There were other small anchorages or harbours on this coast, such as Tel Michal, which has recently been excavated.1 This site is about 6 km north of the Yarkon River and a Roman fortress was built there in the first century BC, probably to control the threat of piracy from Jaffa. Subsequently the trade from the port of Tel Michal was transferred to nearby Apollonia, where an underwater survey in 1990 revealed a harbour and anchorage, with piers and warehouses. This harbour seems to have been in extensive use during the Byzantine period and later. In describing these harbours it is tempting to devise a Greek vocabulary based on the usage of contemporary writers, and to try to distinguish between the ºrmos, the limßn, the prósormos, the Àƒormov and the ênórmisma. How- ever, these words seldom seem to be used with great precision except by his- torians describing sea-battles. In general the ºrmos is the “safe haven”, the inner harbour, often circular in shape, within which ships would be safe from the weather, while the limßn includes the open water outside, and the harbour installations, and sometimes the whole of a seaport town. But a limßn can be kleistóv, as in Thucydides 7, 38, 2. Also, as in Acts 27: 12, it can be âneuqé- tou pròv paraxeimasían, “unsuitable for wintering”. It can also refer to a point at which tax is levied, as can the Latin portus. What most merchants and ship-owners would be seeking would be a safe inner harbour large enough to contain a number of coasting vessels in bad weather. This would have been 1 Z. Herzog, “Archaeology and History at Tel Michal”, in I. Malkin, and R.L. Hohlfelder, (ed.), Mediterranean Cities, (London 1988) 102 ASPECTS OF TRADE ON THE JUDAEAN COAST difficult to find in Judaea itself before the Herodian harbour at Caesarea was built. Jaffa continued through many vicissitudes to serve as a commercial port until 1965, after which it remains as a yachting basin and a small fishing har- bour. Josephus’ description of it2 points to some of the difficulties: “There is no natural harbour at Joppa, which ends in an uneven beach straight for most of its length but curving gently at both ends, where the marks of Androm- eda’s chair are still shown as proofs of the antiquity of the legend. Beating full on this shore and dashing the waves high against the opposing rocks, the north wind makes the anchorage more dangerous than a landless sea.” (trans. G. A. Wil- liamson). Supporting services and warehouses in the city would also be needed. These were often on a small scale, as for example in Jaffa, where the size of the Roman town could not have permitted much storage of commodities or any- thing more than a local market. However, as we note from the stone mould for casting lead weights found there with a Greek inscription mentioning the ago- ranomos, Judah ben Tosomenos, AD 102, there must have been a considerable turn-over of goods in the market in the reign of Trajan. It suggests that there was a revival of trade and a Jewish presence after the destruction of Jaffa by Vespasian. It is a busy urban area today, and only limited excavation has been able to take place. What we do have, however, is the recent very detailed account of the Jaffa-Jerusalem roads.3 The number of roads and the settle- ments on them are evidence of the importance of Jaffa as a centre of trade by sea, especially during the Roman and Byzantine periods, as well as of the prosperity of agriculture and horticulture in the hinterland. Herod rebuilt the harbour at Caesarea for prestige purposes, we are told. Do we underestimate him or his advisers? Any extensive work of this kind, if suc- cessful, will bring prestige, but in view of the nature of this coast and its other harbours, was there not some very practical purpose behind the work carried out at Caesarea? That it ultimately replaced Dor may have been partly for a political reason in that, as Dor was not under Herod’s jurisdiction, any further development there was not for him to undertake. However, it is suggested that the finds made in the Main Bay and the South Bay at Dor show that it spe- cialised in the transport of building stone.4 This view is supported by the num- ber of quarries and the amount of quarrying in the vicinity5 where at least 40% of the population are thought to have been engaged in this trade. The changes in use of the other harbours indicated the extent of silting and the shifting posi- tion of sand-dunes and their contours in relation to warehouses, quays, inland 2 A. J. 15, 333. 3 M. Fischer, B. Isaac, and I. Roll, Roman Roads in Judaea II. 4 Kingsley and Raveh, 80-81. 5 Safrai, 212-213 and 422. J.M. FRAYN 103 transport and coastal settlements. The need for another secure harbour, with provision for general trade requirements and storage seems clear. Ya’akov Nir6 estimated the amount of sand on the Caesarea sand field as about 60 million cubic metres. The ultimate cause of the flooding and destruction of the harbour at Caesarea appears to have been seismic disturbance and, later, subsidence. Until at any rate the end of the first century AD merchandise from Petra, which may have included spices and perfumes from Arabia coming through Nabataea, made its way to Egypt via Gaza. Benjamin Isaac7 calls the Petra – Gaza road “the earliest Roman road known in the region and one of the earli- est east of Byzantium”. The direction of this trade is made clear by the road system, which to a large extent the Romans inherited from previous regimes. The Via Maris followed the coast from Akko to Gaza with routes from further east via Hebron and Beer-sheba, and also with Ein Gedi on the Dead Sea, a centre of balsam cultivation. Ultimately all the east-west routes gave access to the King’s Highway, leading from Damascus via Nabataea to the Red Sea, and part of this road was followed by the Via Nova Traiana. The modern town of Gaza, also known as Azza, is on the coast road, which though it does not exactly correspond to the Via Maris, performs the same function, but it is four kilometres from the coast. The position is summarised by D. A. Dorsey8: it was “due to the wide strip of sand dunes that lined most of the coast of Philis- tia. To avoid these coastal sand dunes the highway of necessity would have kept 4-6 kilometers from the shore as it proceeded through the southern coastal plain.”. The Canaanite city, which was on the north bank of the Wadi Ghazzeh, was about 6 km south of Gaza Town. It is called Tell el Ajjul, and it has been excavated. We are however concerned with the later city and its out- let to the sea. In studying the trade of Gaza we have to contend with two disadvantages: the city of the Roman period has not been excavated, and there is no certainty where the port lay at that time in relation to the present town. There were two different cities of Gaza in the late Republic and early Empire: that which was destroyed by Alexander Jannaeus in 96 BC, and the New Gaza which suc- ceeded it. It has been suggested that the new city was on the coast on the har- bour site, but it seems probable that it would have been built on or near the Via Maris to take advantage of the traffic on its way to and from Egypt and from other coastal towns such as Ashkelon. The arguments in favour of the coastal site assume that at this period most of the trade coming into Gaza from the east was leaving it by the sea, and this is by no means certain, though it is assumed by Glucker.9 It is more likely that this would be the case with local commodi- 6 The Harbours of Caesarea Maritima I, (ed. A. Raban), (Oxford 1989), 23. 7 Roman Frontier Studies, (1979), 892. 8 Roads and Highways of Ancient Israel, 59. 9 (Oxford, 1987) 86 ff. 104 ASPECTS OF TRADE ON THE JUDAEAN COAST ties such as wine and agricultural produce. Merchandise which was already being transported by camels or other draught animals may have continued by land to avoid delays caused by shipping arrangements and the cessation of activity in the winter months, and by inclement weather at any time.