Jury is still out as to whether Pattanam was the erstwhile port of Muziris

‘Ivory from Muziris’, a research paper published this year by noted epigraphist and scholar of Roman history Federico De Romanis contends that ‘Muziris Papyrus’, a significant document on the Indo-Roman trade, contains monetary evaluation of three quarters of an Indian cargo loaded on a ship, Hermapollon.

Among the listed cargo transported by the vessel from the ancient port of Muziris to the Mediterranean were 167 elephant tusks weighing 3,228.5 kg and schidai, arguably fragmented tusks of inferior value, weighing 538.5 kg.

“If the quantity exported by the Hermapollon did not represent an exceptional peak, but was the routine annual export from Muziris or even less than that, then the Muziris export of schidai had to be sustained by a population of at least 380 captive adult male elephants. This number is not far from the 500 or 600 elephants that Cosmas Indicopleustes [an Alexandrian merchant who made many voyages to India] attributes to several kings of the west coast of India — among them, the king of Male,” argues De Romanis.

P.J. Cherian, Director of the Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR) — an autonomous body under the Ministry of Higher Education that has been conducting archaeological excavations at Pattanam in Chittatukara Panchayat, some 25 km north of Ernakulam town — cites the revelation to drive home the point that Muziris, which arguably existed at the Pattanam excavation area, was an urban trade centre with trade links across the Indian Ocean rim, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

At the close of the eighth season of scientific excavations, which the KCHR conducted in tie-up with a team of archaeologists from the Oxford University, the jury is still out in Kerala as to whether Pattanam was the erstwhile port of Muziris and if it was indeed a urbanised space with a developed economy.

Mr. Cherian says the eight seasons of archaeological studies at Pattanam have thrown up strong ‘material evidence’ — artifacts dating back to between 3rd century BC and 5th century AD — indicative of the place’s trade links with regions located as wide apart as south of China to the Catalan region of Spain, which was a part of the Roman Empire. “The yesteryear town of Pattanam first saw human habitation in BC 1000 and the arrival of the Romans in BC 100. Trade brought ideas, culture and technology. This was the driving force that transformed societies along the Indian Ocean. At Pattanam, iron technology had developed into other technologies — of copper, lead and gold. The finesse in production demonstrates the fact that this would not have happened in a pocket,” he says.

“Whether Pattanam was Muziris is not of immediate concern to us,” he maintains.