The Greeks in Bactria and India c24: Appendix 12. Ormuz: A Lost Kingdom

The Greeks in Bactria and India c24

Language: English

Appendix 12. Ormuz: A Lost Kingdom

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Of all the Seleucid satrapies Carmania is the least known; it seems to have no history. Strabo (xv, 726) has scarcely a word more recent than Onesicritus and Nearchus; his notices of the mines and the gold-bearing river are explicitly ascribed to Onesicritus; the head-hunters *might* be new, but as they come between references to Onesicritus and to Nearchus they are probably taken from one of them. Except for some names in Ptolemy, the only writer with any new information is Pliny in book vi, and it can be isolated by first taking out the old information. The mines and the gold-bearing river (vi, 98) are from Onesicritus, as a comparison with Strabo xv, 726 shows; the distance (*ib.*) of the crossing from the ‘promontory’ of Carmania (Cape Jask)¹ to Macae (Ras Mussendam) in Arabia is shown by the name Macae to come from Nearchus,² though Pliny’s ‘five miles’ must be a corruption, for it is neither the actual distance nor Nearchus’ ‘one day’s voyage’. The statement (vi, 110) that beyond the ‘promontory’ are the Harmozaei is from Nearchus.³

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¹ The ἐν Βάδει χώρῳ of Arr. Ind. 32, 5.

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² Μάκετα in Arr. Ind. 32, 7.

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³ Arr. Ind. 33, 2.

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Deducting these passages, and omitting for the moment vi, 152, Pliny’s information later than Onesicritus and Nearchus is as follows. vi, 107, the country about the Amanis river is fertile, with fields and vineyards, and is called Armysia (this variant on Harmozaei should indicate a new source); the towns are Zetis and Alexandria (the latter, near Gulashkird, comes in the Alexander-historians). vi, 110, after mentioning the Harmozaei, and giving a parenthesis to what ‘quidam’ say, he goes on ‘ibi (among the Harmozaei) Portus Macedonum et arae Alexandri in promunturio’; that is, his source knew of a Graeco-Macedonian harbour town on the Gulf of Ormuz⁴ and altars on C. Jask attributed to Alexander, who was never near the place (Nearchus, who was, built no altars). This information is from Hellenistic sources. Next vi, 149: Juba (he says) omits to mention two places, Batrasasave the town of the Omani, and Omana, which earlier writers (‘priores’, *i.e.* some Hellenistic writer) made a much frequented harbour of Carmania. Pliny here is following Juba down the Arabian coast southwards from Gerrha, and he himself thinks that Omana, like the Omani, was in Arabia. This is immaterial, for the Periplus (36) is clear that Omana was in Carmania on the Gulf of Ormuz, as Juba probably knew also from his Hellenistic ‘priores’; Pliny has confused Omana with the Omani on the Arabian side, whose name survives in Oman; doubtless the same people were, or had been, active on both sides of the narrow strait (see p. 485). Omana then was a much frequented harbour of Carmania in Hellenistic times, as it was to the author of the Periplus; this means that for once the Periplus can be used for the earlier period.

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⁴ Nearchus found no town at the Amanis mouth; but this does not prove that Portus Macedonum was a new Greek foundation, for it need not have been actually at the river mouth. I have, for once, got little from Kiessling, *Harmozeia* in PW.

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Ptolemy VI, 18 adds little; native names apart, he gives three towns in Carmania—Alexandria, Carmania Metropolis (certainly Kerman), and Harmouza (? Harmozia); this last is doubtless Pliny’s Portus Macedonum among the Harmozaei, and, as will presently appear, it was probably Omana. Ptolemy’s Harmouza is the Harmoza Regia of the Ravennate geographer; this ought to mean that it was once somebody’s capital. Of course neither Harmozia nor Portus Macedonum (p. 13) was its official name.

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We have then in Pliny bits of some Hellenistic account of a settlement about the Amanis (Minab) river country reaching roughly from Alexandria-Gulashkird to the sea, with a harbour town on the Gulf of Ormuz which did a large trade. There seems to be no other place along the Carmanian coast where a settlement on any scale could be made; and this district, not Kerman, was the essential ‘Carmania’. ‘Alexander’s’ altars on C. Jask are like ‘Alexander’s’ attempt to establish agriculture in Gedrosia (p. 260): both refer to some Hellenistic ruler. Pliny’s Zetis (not noticed by Tscherikower) is not another town but only a nickname for Harmozia;¹ it is a corruption of a transliteration of ζήτησις² (or perhaps ζητεῖς) made in Pliny’s usual fashion,³ and is a parallel to Prophthasia (p. 14); as the latter city was nicknamed ‘Anticipation’ (not of course by Alexander) in allusion to Alexander’s anticipation of Philotas’ conspiracy, so Harmozia was nicknamed ‘The Search’ in allusion to Nearchus’ search for Alexander. The name Portus Macedonum should show that the place was hellenised.

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¹ Zetis and Alexandria in Pliny must be Harmouza and Alexandria in Ptolemy. On nicknames see chap. I.

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² Droysen, 2nd German ed. III, 2, p. 326, already wondered whether Zetis might not be connected with Nearchus’ search.

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³ Besides Zetis and Naumachaeorum here given, I have noticed the following. Pliny VI, 50, ibi Napaei interisse dicuntur a Palaeis = λέγονται ὑπὸ παλαιῶν (‘ancient writers’ have become a tribe). VI, 92, praefluens Parabesten Arachosiorum = παρὰ Βεστήν (Bestia desolata of the Peutinger Table). VI, 92, Cataces, v.l. Cateces, a tribe in Paropamisadae = κάτοικοι (p. 99). VI, 96, Xylinepolis ab Alexandro condita (repeated by various modern writers) = ξυλίνη πόλις, ‘a town built of wood’ (p. 244). Doubtless a search would reveal others. There is a famous one in Ptol. III, 2, 27, noticed by Nobbe: town Σιατούτανδα = Tac. Ann. IV, 72, ad sua tutanda.

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Before going on I must notice Naumachaeorum promunturium in Pliny VI, 152, the projecting land which forms the northern horn of the Gulf of Ormuz as C. Jask does the southern; Pliny calls it ‘over against Carmania’, a good instance of the use of ‘Carmania’ for the Amanis river country. Naumachaeorum is another of these mistaken transliterations (n. 3, below); it is ναυμάχων⁴ or ναυμαχούντων or something of the sort turned into a tribe, the reference being to Numenius’ sea-fight in the next sentence. This took place while Mesene (Chaldaea) was still Seleucid, and belongs to the reign of Antiochus III, probably to some movement in Persis after Magnesia; Numenius was his eparch of Mesene¹ and also commanded his squadron on the Persian Gulf whose fleet station was in Mesene, probably Antioch-Charax. But how he had a sea-fight with Persians of Persis, unless some Greek cities were helping them, is utterly obscure.

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⁴ See Athen. IV, 154 f.

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¹ Niese II, 401 rightly saw that it was Antiochus III. Under Antiochus IV the eparch of Mesene was Hyspaosines.

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I have pointed out (p. 261) the need in the second century B.C. for some trading intermediary between India and Babylonia on the Iranian coast (Gerrha being on the wrong side of the Persian Gulf), as the southern Arabs formed a trading intermediary between India and Egypt; for this was the time when trading vessels from Barygaza still hugged the Gedrosian and Carmanian coasts.² The natural point for such an intermediary, as it was in the Middle Ages, would be the Gulf of Ormuz, and the Periplus, which can be used here, describes the trade activity at Omana (36); there was a regular ferry to Arabia run by hand-sewn native coracles, and in exchange for Indian wares they shipped to India spices brought from Arabia, gold,³ and various other products; the place was also a centre of the pearl trade. Whoever ruled there may well have ruled on both sides of the strait. Probably too in Hellenistic times Indian goods came overland to Omana as well as by sea. Though Strabo thrice mentions a road from Babylonia and Susa by Persepolis to ‘the middle of’ Carmania,⁴ he never carries it on to Seistan; probably therefore most of the caravan trade from India by the southern route through Seistan did not in Hellenistic times go overland to Babylonia by Persepolis but came to sea at the Gulf of Ormuz, again as in the Middle Ages. This was perhaps the return route taken by the Hyrcanian envoys to Nero in A.D. 59, who had to avoid Vologases of Parthia and who started somewhere on the Persian Gulf;⁵ it would have been far shorter for them to go by Ormuz to Seistan than to go round by Patala and the Indus. The Peutinger Table, some items of which in the East may go back to the Seleucid survey, appears to know this route between Seistan and Ormuz and names as a half-way house a place Arciotis in the Juruft basin, possibly Marco Polo’s Camadi, whose ruins have furnished some Hellenistic seals.⁶

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² See Chap. VI p. 260 and references.

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³ Gold from the Hyctanis in Carmania, Pliny VI, 98; gold mines on the Arabian side, ib. VI, 50.

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⁴ II, 79; XV, 727, 744. It goes to τὰ μέσα of Carmania, i.e. Kerman.

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⁵ Tac. Ann. XIV, 25; cf. Herzfeld, Sakastan p. 87; CAH X p. 764.

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⁶ Tomaschek, Wien SB CII p. 175; Sir A. Stein, Journ. Geog. Soc. LXXXIII, 1934, pp. 125, 128.

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What now was the political position on the Gulf of Ormuz after the Greeks had occupied Barygaza and got the Indian end of the great sea-route to Babylonia? After the Seleucids had lost Seistan, Persis, Elymais, and Characene, a process begun after Magnesia and completed at latest soon after the death of Antiochus IV in 163, they cannot have retained the then isolated Carmania. But this province was not at the time included, so far as is known, in the Bactrian or Parthian realm; two centuries later Persis ruled the Kerman country,¹ but that is not in point. The general of the Carmanian satrapy, like others, must have done something for himself in the universal break-up, but no record remains; Carmania in the second century B.C. is a lost land. And by a curious coincidence the British Museum possesses a lost coin.² It is a well-executed Greek copper coin, showing jugate heads, both diademed, of a king Bellaios and his queen, whose name is effaced; the reverse type is the prow of a Greek war-galley, and ‘the strongly bevelled edge recalls Seleucid influence’. It ought then to belong to some Seleucid Succession State on the sea, but it will not fit any place whose coinage is known. The name Bellaios appears to be Macedonian.³

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¹ Periplus 33.

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² Sir G. F. Hill, NC 1928 p. 15 no. 41.

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³ The name Βελλαῖος in Egypt, second century B.C., *BGU* II no. 601 l. 20; the form Βελλεῖος both in Egypt (Preisigke, *Namenbuch* s.v.) and in Macedonia (*SEG* III 499-501); the form Βελλέ(ου), query Βελλε(ίου), at Doura, *SEG* VII 452. The name Βιλλαῖος (Nonnus XXVI, 217) is merely that of the river Billaios (Ap. Rhod. II, 793) or Billis (Pliny VI, 4) in Asia Minor and can hardly be connected with Βελλαῖος; it is more probably the same as the Ionian Βιλλᾶς, on which see L.Robert, *BCH* LVII, 1933, p. 476 n. 4. There was in Illyria, probably c. 167-153 B.C., a princelet named Βαλλαῖος who coined (Head² p. 317); but he cannot be connected with Βελλαῖος, for, beside the different spelling, he had nothing to do with the Seleucids. Could his name be connected with the Illyrian town Βύλλις, on which see Robert, *BCH* LII, 1928, p. 433?

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My suggestion is that the Hellenistic notices of the Amanis country in Pliny, the need of an intermediary on the Iranian coast for the India-Babylonia trade, the epithet Regia applied to Harmozia, the account of Omana, the unknown fate of the Carmanian satrap, and this unique coin, are all connected, and that Bellaios, sometime general of the Carmanian satrapy (or that general’s descendant), ruled a little kingdom on the Amanis river with a good sea-port and capital on the Gulf of Ormuz, a kingdom which must sooner or later have become a vassal of Parthia and had apparently foundered before the date of the Periplus (middle of the first century A.D.). There may be other traces of it beside the coin.

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Stephanus *s.v.* calls Carmania ‘a country of India’. It was never ruled from India; the notice is one of a class in Stephanus, like ‘Gerrha, a city of the Chaldeans’ or ‘Barygaza, the emporium of Gedrosia’ (p. 260), which refer to close trading connections; it shows that at some time Carmania (the Amanis country) was neither Seleucid nor Parthian (i.e. was independent) and was an emporium for the Indian trade, as I have worked out.

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Isidore of Charax knew a king Goaisos who died at a great age in his own lifetime and therefore lived in the first century B.C. and who ruled ‘the spice-land of the Omani’. ⁴ There was no such place, for the Omani, opposite Omana, were far from the nearest frankincense country; τῆς ἀρωματοφόρου means, in the usual way, the depot for spices, which to a native of Charax would be Omana, just as Egyptian Greeks regularly called Somaliland ἡ κινναμωνοφόρος because it was for them the depot for cinnamon from the Far East. Goaisos therefore probably ruled on both sides of the strait. He can hardly have belonged to the Greek dynasty; he was probably an Arab who (or whose predecessors) ousted (or succeeded) the Greeks, like the Arab line of the Abgars in the same century in the formerly Seleucid Osrhoene. If Goaisos were an Arab king ruling also in Omana, Pliny’s belief that Omana was in Arabia would be explained, and there is evidence to show that somewhere in the Hellenistic period some kingdom must have embraced both sides of the straits;¹ even to-day the coastal population of the Gulf of Ormuz is said to be mainly Arab. It would also explain the Arab name Omana; the Arab dynasty, doubtless sprung from the Omani, had given a name taken from their own land and race to the Hellenistic harbour-town and capital which we have met under the names of Harinozia, Zetis, and Portus Macedonum. Whatever the Greek official name of this town may have been, it has perished as have the official names of Hekatompylos and many other towns (p. 13).

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⁴ Pseudo-Lucian *Macrob.* 220, ‘Ομανῶν τῆς ἀρωματοφόρου βασιλεύσας. There is no need to suppose that this is from Pseudo-Isidoros (p. 54).

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¹ Stephanus, s.v. Μάκαι (which is Ras Mussendam), an ἔθνος between Carmania and Arabia; and s.v. Ὤγυρις (the island Khism), whose ethnic he forms on Arabian analogies. Stephanus’ source for these notices is not given, but for this part of the world his usual source is Marcianus, and these notices may therefore ultimately be Hellenistic. Grohmann, Makai in PW, leaves it open where this people came from; Kiessling, Gedrosia in PW, makes them Gedrosians who had migrated to Arabia across the strait.

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There is still another unknown king who may belong to the same dynasty as Goaisos. In 1935 J. M. Unvala published sixty chalkoi from Susa with the legend ‘Of king Tigraios’,² which incidentally revealed that a coin of this king from Susa was already known though the name was corrupt.³ The reverse types include the Ptolemaic eagle, an Artemis, a term, a winged thunderbolt, a boar’s head, and a palm, some of which are Seleucid, while the last three are also Graeco-Indian of the second century B.C. Unvala’s hypothesis that Tigraios was Molon has nothing to recommend it; apart from the silence of Polybius, Molon could not have taken and used a barbarian name. The coin-types point to an international trade centre having definite relations with Greek India;⁴ and as coins from Omana would naturally appear at Susa, Tigraios is probably another of the lost kings of the Amanis kingdom, earlier than Goaisos.

Linked texts (2)

Naturalis historia — C. Plinius Secundus, Latin
Argonautica — C. Valerius Flaccus, Latin