A Buddha believe just two feet tall was unearthed in the ancient Egyptian port city of Berenike.
According to William Dalrymple of the New York Review of Books, this is the first Buddha statue to be discovered west of Afghanistan. It was crafted from Mediterranean marble and adds to the growing body of evidence that ancient Rome and India traded with one another.
Researchers believe it was created in Alexandria around the second century C.E. based on stylistic features. According to a statement released by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, “which indicates his radiant mind,” the halo surrounding the statue’s head is coated with rays of sun.
Berenike, which the antiquities ministry claims was established in the third century B.C.E., grew to become one of the major ports in Roman-controlled Egypt. For centuries, the city served as a trade hub for ivory, textiles, and semiprecious metals before being abandoned somewhere in the sixth century C.E.
New digs at Berenike have uncovered additional evidence of this type of cultural mixing. Phillip the Arab’s emperor, Marcus Julius Philippus, is commemorated with a Sanskrit inscription. From 244 to 249 C.E., he ruled over the Roman Empire. He was born in what is now Syria.
These discoveries add to a growing amount of evidence demonstrating the depth of ties that existed between the Roman Empire and its ancient Indian counterpart. Egypt was “centrally located on the trade route that connected the Roman Empire to many parts of the ancient world,” according to the antiquities ministry, and these discoveries help shed insight on the country’s particular role in that network.
American and Polish archaeologists are working together on the Berenike dig. The American team is directed by Steven Sidebotham, a historian from the University of Delaware, and the Polish team is headed by Mariusz Gwiazda, an archaeologist from the University of Warsaw.
Sidebotham, who has shown tremendous dedication to the project, has been there since the excavations began in 1994. Since then, he and his colleagues have persisted in researching the long-abandoned Red Sea port despite political unrest and funding cuts.
For instance, in 1999, Ann Manser of the University of Delaware’s Research magazine reported that archaeologists had found a jar containing 17 pounds of black peppercorns buried beneath the courtyard floor of a Berenike temple. They were first cultivated in southwestern India in the first century.
“You hear a lot about globalization today,” Sidebotham said to the journal, “but there was a ‘global economy’ linking Europe, Africa, and Asia during the first century of the Christian era, and the city of Berenike is a perfect example of that.
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