Adulis and the transshipment of baboons during classical antiquity
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This Research Advance provides compelling evidence connecting the ancient Egyptian trade of baboons with the ancient port city of Adulis. Combining ancient DNA methods from a single mummified baboon with historical accounts, this work fundamentally advances our understanding of the ancient baboon trade in the Red Sea. Some additional reporting of DNA contamination will make the evidence provided even stronger.
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Abstract
Adulis, located on the Red Sea coast in present-day Eritrea, was a bustling trading centre between the first and seventh centuries CE. Several classical geographers—Agatharchides of Cnidus, Pliny the Elder, Strabo—noted the value of Adulis to Greco-Roman Egypt, particularly as an emporium for living animals, including baboons ( Papio spp.). Though fragmentary, these accounts predict the Adulite origins of mummified baboons in Ptolemaic catacombs, while inviting questions on the geoprovenance of older (Late Period) baboons recovered from Gabbanat el-Qurud (‘Valley of the Monkeys’), Egypt. Dated to ca. 800–540 BCE, these animals could extend the antiquity of Egyptian–Adulite trade by as much as five centuries. Previously, Dominy et al. (2020) used stable isotope analysis to show that two New Kingdom specimens of Papio hamadryas originate from the Horn of Africa. Here, we report the complete mitochondrial genomes from a mummified baboon from Gabbanat el-Qurud and 14 museum specimens with known provenance together with published georeferenced mitochondrial sequence data. Phylogenetic assignment connects the mummified baboon to modern populations of P. hamadryas in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and eastern Sudan. This result, assuming geographical stability of phylogenetic clades, corroborates Greco-Roman historiographies by pointing toward present-day Eritrea, and by extension Adulis, as a source of baboons for Late Period Egyptians. It also establishes geographic continuity with baboons from the fabled Land of Punt (Dominy et al., 2020), giving weight to speculation that Punt and Adulis were essentially the same trading centres separated by a thousand years of history.
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eLife assessment
This Research Advance provides compelling evidence connecting the ancient Egyptian trade of baboons with the ancient port city of Adulis. Combining ancient DNA methods from a single mummified baboon with historical accounts, this work fundamentally advances our understanding of the ancient baboon trade in the Red Sea. Some additional reporting of DNA contamination will make the evidence provided even stronger.
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Reviewer #1 (Public Review):
This work is hugely significant in the context of the debates surrounding ancient Egyptian activity on the Red Sea and voyages to the Egyptian land of Punt. Using genetic studies to provenance baboon mummified baboons in Egypt with contemporary baboon populations in the Red Sea region, the study argues persuasively that Egyptians obtained Baboons from coastal Eritrea, and thus that Egyptian baboon trade involved this region. This of course brings up the larger issue of Egyptian trade with Punt and the southern Red Sea, a place known to have furnished Egyptians with baboons. The authors argue logically for the region of the ancient port-city of Adulis as being particularly important in this baboon trade, as the region around the harbour was said to have been a baboon habitat in the Graeco-Roman period.
Along …
Reviewer #1 (Public Review):
This work is hugely significant in the context of the debates surrounding ancient Egyptian activity on the Red Sea and voyages to the Egyptian land of Punt. Using genetic studies to provenance baboon mummified baboons in Egypt with contemporary baboon populations in the Red Sea region, the study argues persuasively that Egyptians obtained Baboons from coastal Eritrea, and thus that Egyptian baboon trade involved this region. This of course brings up the larger issue of Egyptian trade with Punt and the southern Red Sea, a place known to have furnished Egyptians with baboons. The authors argue logically for the region of the ancient port-city of Adulis as being particularly important in this baboon trade, as the region around the harbour was said to have been a baboon habitat in the Graeco-Roman period.
Along with other previous geoprovenancing scientific studies relating to baboon isotopes and obsidian trace elements, this study provides a solid foundation for considering coastal Sudan and especially Eritrea as part of the land of Punt.
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Reviewer #2 (Public Review):
The paper presents new mitochondrial sequence data from baboons from a museum collection and from one ancient Egyptian mummified baboon. By comparing the mitochondrial sequence of the mummified baboon with the new and existing data, they conclude that it originated from present-day Eritrea, specifically the ancient city of Adulis.
The paper is well-written and an interesting read. The background and details of the study are well-described and logical. Not knowing much about the history of the region I learned a lot. The data also seem sound and the analysis robust, with the exception of one check that should be added (in particular, to assess contamination by looking at mismatching reads).
The main limitation of the paper is just down to the N=1 sample and the limits of mitochondrial phylogeography. Based on …
Reviewer #2 (Public Review):
The paper presents new mitochondrial sequence data from baboons from a museum collection and from one ancient Egyptian mummified baboon. By comparing the mitochondrial sequence of the mummified baboon with the new and existing data, they conclude that it originated from present-day Eritrea, specifically the ancient city of Adulis.
The paper is well-written and an interesting read. The background and details of the study are well-described and logical. Not knowing much about the history of the region I learned a lot. The data also seem sound and the analysis robust, with the exception of one check that should be added (in particular, to assess contamination by looking at mismatching reads).
The main limitation of the paper is just down to the N=1 sample and the limits of mitochondrial phylogeography. Based on the present-day distribution of hamadryas, the baboon must either come from the area of Africa around present-day Eritrea/Ethiopia/Sudan, or from Arabia. All the authors can really reasonably establish here is that this particular baboon did not come from Arabia. But beyond that, there is not much more they can say. Fig 2b makes it clear that the G3Y clade extends over a large range. Given the limited sampling, this is a minimum bound for the range, which probably includes most of the non-Arabian hamadryas range. The link to Adulis is speculative. There may be historical or archaeological evidence to support this but the genetic data really do not come close to establishing this. The authors do acknowledge this in the text, though the abstract makes a much stronger claim. And of course, it also remains possible that other baboons in the assemblage came from other places.
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