red sea

century ago; he preferring, however, to derive the name from 
a dye, "sufo", which he said was produced by the suph or 
bulrushes, that gave the Hebrew name to these waters. That 
too seems improbable because the dye, if so produced, was not 
of commercial importance sufficient to characterize that sea. 
Another suggestion connected the name with Edom, meaning 
red, and would have made Erythraean a mere translation of 
Idumean. 

.The name Erythraean is Greek: QdXaa-o-a Ipvdpa, or ipv6pa!a. 
It is not derived from any Semitic or Egyptian name, and it 
was not applied to the body of water which we know as tbe 
Red Sea. The Greeks knew that as the "Arabian Gulf", the 
natural Egyptian name. Consequently any explanation derived 
from the peoples of that region must be arbitrary and without 
foundation. 

The early Greek literature conceived the habitable earth as 
a circular plane surrounded by the Ocean Stream.' Little by 
little as the mental horizon of the Greeks was pushed out- 
ward it was seen tbat this scheme must be modified, and tbat 
the surrounding ocean here and there penetrated into the 
solid earth. Such irregularities were noted in the Sea of Azov 
and the Caspian Sea, supposed to communicate with the ocean 
stream; such also was our Red Sea, known to the Greeks as 
the Arabian Gulf. Of the navigation of the outer ocean the 
early Greeks knew very little. Vague stories came to them 
of Phoenician and Carthaginian trading beyond the Pillars of 
Hercules, and of a circumnavigation of Africa by Phoenician 
ships in the service of Egypt. Of the eastern ocean they had 
no knowledge until they were brought into contact with the 
great empire of the Persians, which had overthrown that of 
the Chaldaeans, and under both of which there had been sea- 
trading - since time immemorial between the Euphrates and 
Western India. That was the sea-route which they meant 
by the word Erythraean, which came to them from Persia. 
It is through that connection that its origin and meaning must 
be sought. 

'Epvdpos in Greek means red, kpvOpalw to dye red, and 
kpvQalvia to blush; there is a Greek personal name 'EpvOpas 
that has some connection with these meanings, and a Greek 
city 'EpvOpcu in Boeotia, whose oracles made the name familiar 
On Greek lips, as one readily to be extended to some new- 



Vol. xxxiii.] The name of the Erythraean Sea. 351 

found region. Possibly all these facts may have had their 
share in the application of Erythraean to the waters between 
Babylonia and India, and later by a reasonable extension to 
the whole Indian Ocean and all the gulfs that communicate 
with it. 

Hecataeus, the first of the Greek geographers, knows noth- 
ing of an Erythraean Sea. The first writers that give us the 
name are Herodotus, as quoted below, and Pindar (_P. 4, 448), 
the latter in one passage only. From Herodotus, however, we 
have sufficient information clearly to explain the meaning of 
the name as current in his time, which referred to Persian 
and not Egyptian waters. He speaks, (1, 180) of the Euphrates 
flowing from Armenia through Babylon and falling into the 
Erythraean Sea. Again (4, 37) he says: 

"The Persian settlements extend to the southern sea, called 
the Erythraean; above them to the north are the Medes; 
above the Medes, the Saspires; and above the Saspires, the 
Colchians who reach to the northern sea, into which the river 
Phasis discharges itself. These four nations occupy the space 
from sea to sea . . . 

"Another tract beginning at Persia, reaches to the Ery- 
thraean Sea; it comprises Persia, and after that Assyria, and 
after Assyria, Arabia; it terminates (terminating only by 
custom) at the Arabian Gulf, into which Darius carried a 
canal from the Nile . . . 

"Beyond the Persians, Medes, Saspires, and Colchians, 
toward the east and rising sun, extends the Erythraean Sea, 
and on the north the Caspian Sea and the river Araxes, 
which flows toward the rising sun. Asia is inhabited as far 
as India; but beyond this it is all desert toward the east, 
nor is any one able to describe what it is. Such and so great 
is Asia." 1 

The first Greek record of navigation in the Erythraean 
Sea is likewise found in Herodotus (4, 4): 

"A great part of Asia was explored under the direction of 
Darius. He being desirous to know in what part the Indus, 
which is the second river that produces crocodiles, discharges 
itself into the sea, sent in ships both others on whom he could