The Frontier Zones in 218 B.C.

The Frontier Zones — Ptolemaic Egypt.

The militarised edges of the kingdom beyond the First Cataract and along the Red Sea — held not for their farmland but for gold, for war-elephants, and for the trade of the southern seas. Here Ptolemaic power thins into garrisons, mining camps and hunting-ports, pressing south against the kingdom of Kush and out toward the Indian Ocean. It is a frontier of profit and ambition rather than settlement.