Page 252 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

[1510-144° B«c’] The Amber Route J13
By the beginning of summer—after a charter trip to Byblos
on the Lebanese coast to fetch cedar for Hatshepsut’s new pal­

ace—the ship was ready to start the long voyage home with a
full cargo of manufactured goods, mainly of bronze, and with a
mast and sail new-fitted in the Lebanese shipyards. Less than
half of the original crew set off on the return voyage with her.
The young men in particular had been infected with the delights
of city life and the chances of making a quick fortune by sailing

between the centers of the civilized world. In Knossos and in

other ships, with vague promises that they would sail north again
on the next voyage. And the ship signed on in their place a few
Scandinavian sailors who felt homesickness after years in the

Mediterranean, and a number of young Cretans and Egyptians
and mainland Greeks anxious to explore the possibilities of di­
rect sea trade with northern Europe.
In the years that followed it became impossible to keep track
of the men from the Swedish coast as they scattered over the sea

routes of the world. Occasionally two of them would meet at an
obscure port and exchange reminiscences over their wine. Some
of them were sailing the route between Crete and Sicily, and oc­
casionally on to Spain. Others were on the cargo haul up and
down the Adriatic, carrying to Crete and Egypt the goods com­

ing down to the neighborhood of Trieste by the river routes
across Europe; and among the cargoes they carried was a great
deal of amber which may well have been originally collected on
their own native beaches back in Sweden. Others sailed up to
Troy and beyond into the Black Sea. Perhaps the greatest num­

ber were in the coastal trade between Egypt and the Levant,
or the short route between Egypt and Crete. But a few could
tell of longer voyages, up the Danube into central Europe, or up
the other Black Sea rivers farther east; or down the Red Sea to

Punt, on the incense route to the Hadramaut and the ivory route
to the bushmen of east Africa. They told of trips to England to
fetch tin, and other voyages even farther out into the Atlantic.
One had sailed southwest from the Straits of Gibraltar, on one of
the infrequent trips to the Canaries, and he had strange stories
to tell. There were rumors in that part of the world, he said, that