gems, ancient Egypt, ancient trade, commerce, archaeology, archaeology, Hellenistic, Alexander the Great, Egypt, Libya, North Africa, Red Sea, Ethiopia, Eritrea

This book is the first specific treatment of an issue identified shortly before 1850 by a French scholar, J.-A. Letronne, and a German scholar, E. A. Schwanbeck. Since then, the ancient interplay between the notion of Ethiopia—or the land of the “burnt-faced peoples”—and the notion of India, an excessively extended concept stemming from the discovery of Sind, or the lower Indus basin, has continually complicated the interpretation of a vast number of Greek and Latin texts. It should be noted here, while acknowledging the particular importance of this area of inquiry, that the problem falls within a fairly broad category. The spatial constructs delineated by language are constantly being reshaped, expanding or contracting, often overlapping partially without their names being changed accordingly. In antiquity, for example, we might cite the respective domains of the Numidian and the Moor, the encroachment of the central Mediterranean by the Adriatic Sea, the shifting boundaries of Asia and Europe, or the relocation of Calabria or Britain. In more recent times—which, paradoxically, bring us closer to the subject treated by Pierre Schneider—we cannot ignore the notion of the West Indies after Christopher Columbus, and the enduring presence today of “Indians” in the Americas. Hence the ultimately fruitless French attempt to distinguish between Hindus and Indians.