Page 227 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

ioa 7 Tie Argosies [1580-1510 B.C.]
selves a considerable proportion of this middle class, organized

their shipping lines and trading caravans to meet the demand,
while the manufacturers concentrated more and more on articles
for export to pay for the imported luxuries.
Great barges plied the length of the Egyptian Nile, working
their way down river with sweeps aiding the current, and coast­
ing up river with the north wind filling their sails. At Avaris and

the other estuary ports where the wind brought the tang of salt
to the nostrils of the fresh-water sailors, they exchanged their
cargoes, while scribes checked bales and crates against then-
shipping lists and bills of lading, all written on papyrus sheets in

the swift hieratic script that had already lost most of its resem­
blance to the neatly drawn picture writing of the hieroglyphs.
The estuary ports were the clearinghouses for the growing
volume of overseas trade. They had a mercantile tradition run­
ning back for centuries, as their merchant-guild conventions were
fond of reminding themselves. Some of the earliest ships to sail

westward into the barbarian world of the western Mediterra­
nean, and even beyond the Straits, had come from these ports,
and that was now nearly seven hundred years ago (as long ago
as the Crusades are removed from us). It was said that ships

from Crete still trafficked in that direction, and the Egyptian
merchants discussed half-seriously reopening their old western
trade. There was a good market in Egypt just now for anything
exotic, and native handicrafts from the primitive European tribes
would command a good price and could probably be bought

for a handful of beads.
A certain amount of European stuff did come in, probably
at vastly inflated prices, with the cargoes from Crete, and gave
them some idea of the products available in the north and west.

The native goldwork was quite good, when it did not try to
imitate Egyptian models, and there were even quite nice things
in bronze and wood. And there was jewelry, splendidly primi­
tive and barbaric, made of new semiprecious stones which ap­
peared likely to become fashionable—jet, which was shiny

black, and amber, which was like solid honey.
But the native handicrafts were for the specialist importer.
The bulk of the traffic was from nearer home. Just as in Hyksos