The Nabataeans and spices
The Nabataeans, a nomadic people of traders from northern Arabia, were great travelers and with long columns of camels and donkeys, they crossed the length and breadth of Arabia, reaching in India and China. Their first objective was to find incense and spices to resell to the Greeks.
As the centuries passed, they settled in the Petra area, today in Jordan, and acquired great experience in maritime travel, together with the southern Arabs. Arabia therefore became the meeting point for trade between Europe, Africa and Asia. Around the 5th century BC. C. conquered the monopoly of the spice trade. They tried to protect their treasure, in every way, from the Romans and Greeks, telling fantastic stories and trying to keep the places where the spices were found hidden.
With their mercantile network, they had created a real spice route that crossed the Red Sea, reached India, which was the pepper collection point, passed through Sri Lanka , across the Indian Ocean and reached the Moluccas and the Spice Islands; they then pushed north and arrived in China where they rejoined the Silk Road and crossing all of northern China and Mesopotamia they reached Baghdad. But with their boats they went as far as the Mediterranean and the coasts of East Africa.
They knew sesame, coriander, cumin, poppy and saffron which they used mixed with flour to make spice cakes. They traded all these spices and transported them to Greece and Rome together with juniper berries, sage and mint scented oils. According to legend, they were all aromas dear to the goddess of love Aphrodite to whom they were offered; all these spices had, according to them, aphrodisiac properties.
The spice trade was so lucrative that Alexander the Great, after the conquest of Egypt in 331 BC. C., founded Alexandria which became the spice trading center and the bridgehead for the Mediterranean countries. Although the Arabs continued to have a monopoly on spices, Alexandria became very rich only from the taxes paid on spices.
The Greeks and spices
The Greeks had an extraordinary passion for incense and spices and had learned to dissolve them in olive oil to burn them: they were mainly intended for religious and sacrificial use to find a point of communication with the deities. In Callipolis an inscription recalls the sacrifice of meat and spices to Apollo, "preventer of plagues" to keep epidemics away; at the beginning of Oedipus Rex, Sophocles says that the Thebans tried to face the plague that was plaguing Thebes with spices and incense.In the history of the Greeks, but also in subsequent centuries, divinities, spices and diseases often appear connected. With the evolution of the scientific study of medicine, this correlation is lost but the use of spices for body care and to deal with diseases remains and intensifies.In the medical schools of ancient Greece they tried to catalog the curative and medical effects of spices by relating them to empirical observations: Hippocrates used them as medicines and the botanist Theophrastus recommended them for their function of heating and aiding digestion. They also poured this passion into the kitchen where they used coriander, cumin and anise, still present today in many Greek dishes. They loved wines spiced with anise, oregano and coriander.
In the palaces of Knossos, in Crete, archaeologists have found some frescoes, which depict girls grinding spices and numerous tablets on which scribes wrote down the goods kept in storage and , among these, the spices were in truly remarkable quantities.Also in Greece, Sappho, the poetess of the island of Lesbos, obtained mint, saffron, cinnamon and dill from China, India and Malaysia and used them to perfume her body and that of her companions.