Berenike and the Red Sea Spice Route (opens in new tab)

Situated on the western coast of the Red Sea in antiquity were a series of thriving seaports, bringing in trade from as far as way as Sir Lanka. Key mercantile centres, where goods made in Iberia could theoretically have been sold alongside items crafted thousands of miles to the east, in South East Asia. Of these seaports, one of the most remarkable has to be Berenike, a thriving cosmopolitan trading centre, first for the Hellenistic Ptolemaic Kingdom and later for Imperial Rome.To talk thro...