the Red sea, that lucrative commerce which supplied precious stones and spices and incense to the ever increasing service of the gods of Egypt. This was their prerogative, jealously guarded and upon this they lived and prospered according to the prosperity of the Pharaohs. The muslins and spices of India they fetched themselves or received from the Indian traders in their ports on either side of the gulf of Aden; carrying them in turn over the highlands to the Upper Nile, or through the Red Sea and across the desert to the Thebes or Memphis.” It may be added that the articles taken to Egypt by the Arab intermediaries were South Indian ones and that South Indian Paradavar took them in their boats to Aden and the East African coast.

     “In the inscriptions of Harkhuf, an Assuan noble under (the EgyptiaŒ king Mernere of the VI Dynasty (B.C. 2,600) occurs the following: ‘I descended (from country of Yan, Southern Nubia) with 300 asses laden with incense, ebony, grain, panthers, ivory, throw-sticks and every good product.” The ebony referred to may be African ebony; but it may also have been Indian ebony, which was superior to the African one and was in ancient times taken from India to the Persian gulf, whence the Arabians took it to the coast of Africa, and from there it was taken via the Upper Nile to Egypt, as it was in later times, i.e. 1,500 B.C. and after this date Indian ebony was so popular that Theophrastus (IV century B.C.) ascribes the wood to India only and Virgil (Georgics II, 116,7) speaks of it as peculiar to India.

     In a later chapter it will be shown that grain and panthers were exported to Africa in later times. These two articles here mentioned may also have gone from South India. “In the VI dynasty, under Pepi II (xxvi century B.C.) a royal officer, Sebni, sent to the Tigre highlands, records how he descended to Wawat and Uthek, and sent on the royal attendant Iri, with two others, bearing incense, clothing (probably cottoŒ, one tusk and one hide.” Now the Deccan was the only part of the world where cotton cloth was woven in those far off days.

     “The ivory mentioned above was African but may also have been Indian. From early times Indian ivory was in demand, partly