The ancient port of Muziris in India has long been central to scholarship on Indian Ocean trade connections, despite the archaeological site itself having never been located with any certainty. The town (Μουζιρίς in Greek) has previously been associated with, among others, Kodungallur on the Malabar coast and Pattanam in Kerala.Footnote ¹ These searches for an actual, tangible Muziris continue because of its evident importance in the canon of textual sources that have enhanced our current knowledge of Indian Ocean trade networks in antiquity. The Muziris papyrus, with its two fragmented Greek texts that form the core of the present volume, is one of these main sources.

With its focus on Indo-Roman trade, De Romanis's (De R.'s) new book is a highly valuable contribution to the Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy series. By looking beyond the limits of the Roman Empire and its better-known spheres of influence, this book expertly opens the door to historical scholarship that regards Rome as an integral part of wider processes of exchange and interactions, from the Mediterranean region to the Indian subcontinent and beyond. De R. is without a doubt the right scholar to achieve this: for decades, his work on Indo-Roman trade has been pivotal for the field and has contributed expert knowledge to new trends, finds, and perspectives.Footnote ² This recent volume continues this line of expertise in the form of (and with the distinct focus of) a papyrological study. The resulting book does not offer a historical overview or timeline of ancient Indian Ocean trade connections, with support of various historical sources. These elements are all present, naturally, but one might call them supporting players to the volume's protagonist: the Muziris papyrus itself. However, this book is also not a textual commentary in the standard sense; it goes far beyond the standard formats of papyrological and philological commentaries.

As the author states at the start (“Introduction and synopsis,” 1–7), an entire book is required to address the Muziris papyrus properly. This is partially because of the complexity and technical difficulties of reading, translating, and interpreting the fragmented Greek texts themselves. But it is also, if not mainly, because the contents of these texts cannot be sufficiently understood without a substantial framing within the complex, wider context of Indian Ocean trade to which they specifically refer. This volume treats both these components with care and impressive knowledge.

The fact that the author starts the book not merely with a synopsis and summary but with a full and detailed overview of his conclusions emphasizes from the onset that this work is not a historical treatise on Indian Ocean trade. The best way to approach this volume, one could argue, is first and foremost as a contextual historical commentary. By elaborating on the conclusions from the start, De R. offers his readers a practical guide, a leading thread, that is upheld throughout all the subsequent chapters. With these conclusions, another main aspect of the book becomes immediately evident: all the concluding points (listed on 4–7) maintain a distinct focus on the papyrus texts themselves, on the details that they reveal about the workings of trade bureaucracies in both ancient Egypt and India, and on how they provide evidence for specific transport routes and the supply of and demand for certain goods. All subsequent contextual sources and elaborations that follow serve to substantiate these main conclusions. De R. is abundantly clear that his intention for the book is to understand the contents of the Muziris papyrus. To achieve this, the wider historical context of Indian Ocean trade is provided as a necessary and enlightening backdrop.

Each part of the book is written with clarity and precision. Even though the subject matter throughout has a level of complexity associated with specialized expertise, the volume nonetheless remains accessible to beginning students as well. The initial presentation of the papyrus texts is, simply put, a masterclass in papyrology (“Text and translation,” 11–27) and forms the required basis for the subsequent contextual parts of the book. Part I (“Contextualizing the Muziris papyrus,” 31–155) is divided into five chapters that present not only a relevant context for the papyrus texts, but also – and perhaps especially – an overview of ancient Indian Ocean trade scholarship, with a focus on the role of Rome in the exchange networks. Parts II, III, and IV offer more detailed focus on specific content from the Muziris papyrus by elaborating on the nature of loan contracts (“Let him look to his bond,” 159–208), considering merchant-ship cargo contents based on the available textual sources (“The assessment of a cargo from Muziris,” 211–74), and exploring tax regulations for trade vessels (“The Red Sea tax and the Muziris papyrus,” 277–320).

To follow De R.'s own example, this review starts with one of the volume's main conclusions. The book's title, The Indo-Roman Pepper Trade and the Muziris Papyrus, implies equal focus on the historical phenomenon of ancient pepper trade on the one hand, and the study of the papyrus as an ancient text on the other. But this is not what the volume ultimately offers. Throughout each chapter, the research and historical sources cited to contextualize the papyrus contents are predominantly, even exclusively, focused on textual sources (e.g., the Periplus Maris Erythraei, other Greek and Roman authors such as Pliny and Strabo, and Tamil poems from South India). In order to study the Indo-Roman pepper trade as a historical phenomenon comprehensively, it is crucial to take recent archaeological studies, debates, and data sets into consideration. Nevertheless, these are noticeably absent. Although this book is without a doubt a work of specialized expertise in papyrology, it also reads as though De R. made a deliberate choice to set aside or even disavow interdisciplinary research approaches in the field of Indian Ocean trade overall. Therefore, although it offers one of the most authoritative treatises to date on the Muziris papyrus itself, this volume invites further discourse, especially on the pressing question of how to reconstruct empirically – as well as to understand historically – ancient maritime trade networks and the role of Rome within these complex processes.

One could argue that De R.'s specialized book is a valuable contribution particularly for interdisciplinary research: after all, archaeologists, historians, and philologists alike will be able to not only use it as a new standard work on textual sources concerning Indo-Roman maritime trade but also incorporate the author's expertise into wider studies. There is certainly something to say for the expert foundational knowledge and the required focus it entails. One of the dangers that lurks beyond the threshold of interdisciplinary research is, of course, the sacrifice of more traditional specialized expertise for a wider and shallower scope. However, the availability of specialized expertise in different fields only rarely seems to incite scholars to unite or even initially connect – in other words, experts often remain within their own specific research niches or containers. As a result, the conclusions of specialized studies tend to reflect such “container thinking” as well: methodological containers, cultural containers, regional containers, containers that separate academic disciplines such as archaeology and philology and that, through this, divide interpretations of complex ancient processes of exchange and connectivity into what appear to be more manageable knowledge sectors. But these sectors and separations, as is increasingly emerging, are prone to reflect only a partial reality of the past, a partial perspective, or – at worst – an involuntary misinterpretation of the available sources. For this reason, “the study of history in general is now approaching a new stage of interdisciplinarity.”Footnote ³ As most recently argued by Pitts and Versluys, “world history is often framed in terms of flows of people,” but it is in equal measure “about the flows of objects.”Footnote ⁴ For the study of ancient Indian Ocean maritime networks, including the Indo-Roman pepper trade, the flow of objects, of food and spices and herbs, of glass beads and ivory and oils, is not only a crucial component but the core incentive for the existence of such networks in the first place. The study of this pivotal flow of objects, all the way back and forth from the Mediterranean to the Indian subcontinent, is central to De R.'s book as well, yet it is based predominantly on the references to these objects (i.e., their origins, destinations, purposes, and management) in ancient texts. The virtual absence of substantial considerations of the archaeological remains of these very same objects is not only notable but surprising given the contextual nature of the book.

In Part I, the author charts out the main routes and ports of Indo-Roman trade as described in textual sources such as the Periplus. This section seems intended not as a critical engagement with the current interdisciplinary field of Indian Ocean studies but as a means of setting the stage for the book's protagonist, the Muziris papyrus, and our understanding of its contents. This thespian analogy is, in fact, emphasized by De R. himself, who named one of the book's latter sections “Dramatis personae” (298–320). Throughout the volume, this metaphor is maintained; the papyrus itself is always center stage, and the conclusions and insights into its contents, I would argue, can be considered definitive. As a commercial loan contract, the papyrus tells us about specific round-trip voyages between Red Sea and western Indian ports, transfer strategies via Nile barges and desert caravans in Roman Egypt, the careful scheduling of departures, the supply of and demand for specific commodities, and even the size of the vessels that would regularly cross the Indian Ocean.Footnote ⁵ As the author concludes (“Epilogue,” 321–24), the Muziris papyrus “shed new light on the commercial workings of the Indian emporion of Muziris, on the fiscal entrepreneurial game played by the [Roman] imperial treasury, the Indian Ocean merchants, and the financiers who contracted with the imperial treasury for the Red Sea tax and financed the India trade” (321). He also points out the differences apparent in the mention of, for example, gem trade between Muziris and Sri Lanka and other South Indian regions in the Periplus, whereas these are entirely absent from the Muziris papyrus texts. Archaeological sources would have been a valuable addition, especially concerning these aspects. The Muziris papyrus's protagonist role would not have been diminished by the substantive inclusion of archaeological sources. The detailed focus on the information conveyed through the Muziris papyrus's texts makes this volume a truly invaluable work on the practicalities and bureaucracies of ancient Indian Ocean trade as evident from textual sources. However, in its conclusions, the information derived from these ancient textual sources is presented as if reflecting the full scope of historical information about these topics and processes. By largely excluding archaeological sources – and hence the historical data and information that these offer – this book provides a definitive overview of ancient textual studies in the context of the Muziris papyrus specifically but an incomplete overview of the reality of the context of ancient Indian Ocean trade networks. In other words, to return to the thespian analogy: the scene is set, so it seems, with only a partial, deliberate selection of props and backdrops.

The nature of textual sources, their subjectivity, and the fact that they were written by people whose knowledge or motives could easily be fallible or incorrect, is of course what makes their study so immensely fascinating and valuable. Ancient texts give us a glimpse into historical minds, in a way that archaeological objects rarely can achieve; this is true even for seemingly practical or applied texts such as the Periplus and the Muziris papyrus. For example, much of the information conveyed by the Periplus is second- or thirdhand knowledge – writings about places across the Indian subcontinent by an author who had never traveled there and who relied on reports from merchants who had, in turn, spoken to these travelers. And yet, this information is still often treated as statistically reliable data in order to create maps and lists of trade-ware distributions based entirely on these subjective descriptions.Footnote ⁶ This subjectivity does not make the information less valuable or less relevant, but it can become problematic, in interpretative terms, when subjective information is presented at face value. In Parts II and III, De R. uses the Periplus text in particular to reconstruct routes and distribution overviews of trade wares to create a context for the specific ships, contracts, and bureaucratic processes mentioned in the Muziris papyrus. But surprisingly missing from these sections (and entirely from the book's bibliography) is reference to the recent work of Eivind Heldaas Seland, who applied network mapping tools to these same data derived from the Periplus itself, while at the same time acknowledging that study of Indian Ocean commerce “long depended on separate regional archaeologies and a handful of literary sources with Western/Roman bias.”Footnote ⁷ By focusing on the Periplus within such an interdisciplinary research scope, Seland has contributed valuable findings to interpretative papyrology as well. For example, his network analysis of port prominence and connection frequency based on the Periplus text showed that the port of Muziris was not among the most widely connected ports: based on the Periplus, that role belonged to Barygaza in India, Muza in current-day Yemen, and Berenike and Myos Hormos in Egypt.Footnote ⁸ Such studies would, therefore, have added valuable layers and expanded discourse to the book's overview of these same ancient commercial networks.

Arguably the most fruitful insights into complex processes such as exchange and connectivity in antiquity might only be achieved when text-based information is, at the very least, compared to the relevant archaeological data available; and yet, as Seland has clearly demonstrated, this connection is often not made. Archaeological studies have tended to focus on individual sites, studying data sets in isolation, whereas historical studies continue to turn to texts above all, or even leave archaeological sources out of the equation entirely.Footnote ⁹ Due to this separation of disciplines, misinterpretations are more likely to occur.

One of the most interesting, albeit challenging, results of interdisciplinary study is the way in which ancient texts and archaeological sources not only supplement but very often contradict each other, thereby forcing us almost constantly to nuance and adjust both our understandings and our reconstructions of ancient commercial processes. To highlight such growing academic discourse, this review will conclude with two specific examples of relevant interpretative challenges in light of this book: the extent of the role of South India and Sri Lanka in organized trade networks (discussed in Part I, 107–24), and the question of Roman agency and dominance as still often implied by “Indo-Roman” terminology (which the book maintains: e.g., 298–321).

In his overview of Indian Ocean routes, De R. addresses the question raised by Rajan Gurukkal in his 2016 book, Rethinking Classical Indo-Roman Trade: Political Economy of Eastern Mediterranean Exchange Relations.Footnote ¹⁰ To summarize briefly, Gurukkal suggests that the traditional terminology of “Indo-Roman trade” is incorrect, given that in post-Maurya times, there was no unification across the Indian subcontinent. Therefore, we cannot speak of “Indian trade” as if it were an entity that can be studied on par with imperial Rome. This would have been especially the case for South India, Tamil Nadu, and Sri Lanka. Gurukkal even rejects the existence of flourishing ports in South India and Sri Lanka, and he speaks of a lack of ship technology in those regions (in direct line, it seems, with M. G. Raschke's premise that Indian and Arabian ships were not as seaworthy as Graeco-Roman ships, and that Romans not only incited but dominated the Indian Ocean networks).Footnote ¹¹ De R. himself holds fast to the term “Indo-Roman trade” but follows the investigation of these and similar points by posing the question, “Should we talk only of importation from India by Roman traders?” (108). Subsequently, the only data considered (108–14) are textual sources, such as the Periplus, Pliny's Naturalis historia, and small fragments of ancient Tamil poems.

Neither Gurukkal nor De Romanis (nor Raschke in 1978) turn to the widely available archaeological sources that document South Indian trade activities, ports, and shipbuilding, which appear, in large numbers, to contradict the theory that no substantial or complex trade networks were maintained in South India, as the more sporadic information from texts might seem to suggest.Footnote ¹² The important research by, for example, Vimala Begley on the port of Arikamedu; Robin Coningham on the trade networks of Anuradhapura; and K. S. Mathew on connectivity between imperial Rome, the Indian Ocean networks, and Muziris in particular, are not cited in the book, yet it is exactly these archaeological studies that could have significantly expanded and nuanced the contextual overview of the Muziris papyrus.Footnote ¹³ De R.'s insistence on the term “Indo-Roman trade” seems rooted in the same traditional foundations of maritime commerce studies that go back to Sir Mortimer Wheeler's interpretation of the South Indian port of Arikamedu as a “Roman emporium” in the 1930s.Footnote ¹⁴ Wheeler based his initial idea of Roman trade dominance in South India on a handful of textual references and 38 sherds at the site that he interpreted as Italian Arretine pottery, whereas hundreds of thousands of additional sherds at the same site, all of South Indian origin, were left out of his conclusions.Footnote ¹⁵ However, in Wheeler's wake, “subsequent excavations at Arikamedu in South India and Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka have demonstrated that substantial levels of interregional trade flourished before Roman contact.”Footnote ¹⁶ In archaeology, the traditional (Eurocentric) paradigm that regarded Indian Ocean trade as a stage for Roman protagonists and only passive South Indian players has been overturned by a large amount of testable evidence, and it has since been replaced by a fuller historical reality of Indian Ocean exchange networks, which were already at work, flexible, and expanding since the Iron Age.Footnote ¹⁷ Moreover, modern research techniques, such as XRF (X-ray fluorescence) and chemical analyses, are increasingly showing that, quite often, archaeological finds that were traditionally identified as Mediterranean or Roman at sites in India and along the Arabian coast were almost entirely of local manufacture.Footnote ¹⁸

These contradictions between archaeological data and ancient texts only add to the subject's complexity, and it seems that only an integral consideration of all available information (from papyrology to chemical analysis) can help us understand the workings and impact of ancient trade routes. The fact that textual sources are much less numerous than archaeological sources does not change their qualitative value for understanding, especially, how people managed such complex trade networks in antiquity. This, after all, is the main topic of the Muziris papyrus. But by excluding archaeological sources, research, and discourse, even the most expert and knowledgeable studies of ancient texts and papyri – such as the present book – will suffer as a result.

The complexities of studying South Indian trade are therefore tied to the encompassing question of the term “Indo-Roman.” In 1995, Himanshu Prabha Ray was one of the first scholars to challenge this term and its premise openly. She used scientific evidence from Mediterranean, Indian, and Arabian ships to demonstrate that Roman rigging systems were much less suited to Indian Ocean sailing conditions than those of the Indian and Arabian dhows; she was one of the first to challenge the traditional interpretations of Arikamedu as a Roman emporium by pointing out the lack of evidence for a flourishing Western presence at this site; and she highlighted the patterns by which Roman goods were transferred and dispersed across the Indian subcontinent by means of networks that had already existed in these regions for centuries.Footnote ¹⁹ Since the 1990s, some of Ray's hypotheses have been challenged, expanded, or overturned by new archaeological studies.Footnote ²⁰ But the main premise – that only through integral archaeological and scientific research in collaboration with textual and historical studies may the reality of ancient Indian Ocean commerce be fully understood – has only become more valid as it remained part of the discourse it helped foster.

The absence of Ray in the book's bibliography, and the absence of the discourse on Indian Ocean archaeology that followed from Ray's and similar studies, could be explained by the fact that the Muziris papyrus focuses on ships and merchants that sailed from Roman Egypt; therefore, De R. likewise emphasizes bureaucracies and practicalities with a similar Roman focus and origin: without a doubt, this is achieved with remarkable expertise. The book offers detailed insights into the complex workings of trade vessels, bureaucracies, and regulations, as described in and inferred from the papyrus. But at its onset, the book also promises insight into the “historical phenomenon in which the Mediterranean world and the southern portion of the Indian peninsula were closely intertwined” (32). Through its distinctive focus on textual sources and lack of engagement with recent archaeological and interdisciplinary discourse on Indian Ocean networks, the book is only partially successful in this second aim.

The initial chapter is called “Bridging disconnected seas,” and with this book, De R. indeed provides a new standard work and commentary on the Muziris papyrus and the way in which the ships it mentioned would have crossed these seas. But it will be necessary to bridge disconnected disciplines of study before insights can be gained into the full scope and historical reality of Indian Ocean exchange networks, and the ways in which Mediterranean and Indian “players” indeed intermingled on the very same stage.