Wednesday, November 30, 2005

The History of the Spice Trade : 1 :The Spice of Antiquity

If we can believe a favorite myth of the Assyrians, whose chiseled stone tablets represent the earliest written records yet discovered, at least one spice was known before our world was created! These early peoples, who lived thousands of years before

Christ, claimed that their gods were drinking sesame seed wine at a gathering held just before they made the Earth.

From the hieroglyphics on the walls of the pyramids, to the scriptures of the Bible, we find constant mention of the important part spices played in the lives of the ancients. Some of the spices, herbs and seeds we know today, were cultivated by the early peoples of the western world, our word, "aroma" was the ancient Greek word for "spice".

Along the trade routes of antiquity went caravans with as many as 4,000 camels bearing spices and the rich merchandise of the East, plodding along from Goa, Calicut and the Orient to spice markets in Nineveh and Babylon; Carthage, Alexandria and Rome. Joseph, of the coat of many colors, was sold to spice traders by his envious older brothers: "And behold, a company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt."

The route from Gilead to Egypt was part of the "golden road to Samarkand" traveled for hundreds, almost thousands of years, bringing pepper and cloves from India, cinnamon and nutmeg from the Spice Islands (or Moluccas), ginger from China.

For hundreds of years frail ships clawed their way along the Indian coast, past the pirate-infested Persian Gulf, along the coast of South Arabia and through the Red Sea to Egypt. Those were typical ways of bringing spices from the Orient to the Western world in ancient tunes. As early as the days of Tiberius Caesar they discovered that ships scud-ding before the blast of the monsoon - the seasonal wind from the Indian Ocean, blowing east in summer, west in winter - could bring their spice cargoes to market in record time. Shipwrecks and storms brought large losses and there were constant robberies, but the risks were outweighed by the eventual profits for, as might be expected during the highly developed Greek and Roman eras, spices were in great demand.

So costly that only the wealthy could afford them, spices nevertheless were used in every conceivable way. Many and varied were the aromatics, which seasoned the delicacies served at Roman banquets. Medicines required great quantities of spices and herbs, as witness the writings of Hippocrates, Theophrastcs, Dioscorides and Pliny. Bay leaves (or laurel) were woven into crowns for Olympic heroes; spice-scented balms were used after baths; spice-flavored wines were popular; incense made of spice was burned in temples and even along the roads.The History of the Spice Trade

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