Ptolemy Euergetes Directed His Thoughts More To Conquest Than To Commerce,
Though He Rendered The Former, In Some Degree, Useful And Subservient To
The Latter.
After having passed the Nile, and subdued the nations which lay
on the confines of Egypt, he compelled them to open a road of communication
between their country and Egypt.
The frankincense country was the next
object of his ambition: this he subdued; and having sent a fleet and army
across the Red Sea into Arabia, he compelled the inhabitants of the
district to maintain the roads free from robbers, and the sea from
pirates - a proof that these people had made some advances in seafaring
matters, and also of the attention paid by Euergetes to the navigation of
the Red Sea, as well as to the protection of land commerce. Indeed the
whole of his progress to Aduli, which we have more particularly mentioned
in another place, was marked as much by attention to commerce as by the
love of conquest; but though by this enterprize he rendered both the coasts
of the Red Sea tributary, and thus better adapted to commerce, there is no
proof that he passed the Straits of Babelmandeb. It is true, indeed, that
he visited Mosullon, which lies beyond the straits, but not by sea, having
marched by land to that place, through the interior of Abyssinia and Adel.
From the whole of this enterprize of Euergetes we may justly infer, that
though he facilitated the intercourse by land between Egypt and those parts
of Africa which lay immediately beyond the straits, yet his ships did not
pass the straits, and that in his reign the discoveries of Timosthenes had
not been followed up or improved for the purpose of trading by sea with the
coast of Africa.
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