Red Sea Stations in 218 B.C.

Red Sea Stations — Ptolemaic Egypt › The Frontier Zones.

A string of harbours down the African shore of the Red Sea — chief among them Berenice, named for the queen, and Ptolemais Theron, "Ptolemais of the Hunts" — founded to land war-elephants brought north from the Nubian and Aethiopian coasts. From the same ports Greek captains began to reach down the Indian Ocean, opening the long trade in ivory, incense and aromatics that would make the Red Sea one of Egypt’s great arteries of wealth.