OP is basically following on from Balabanova. So I’m actually not sure about this from what I’ve done so far but I did my due diligence and hunted down some bibliography on Balananova’s claims as well as the articles he referenced.

Basically, Balabanova tried toxicology on several unprovenanced mummies from a German museum and found traces indicating cocaine and nicotine (not tobacco) in their system.

I specify this because there are several plants in West Africa that contain nicotine without requiring tobacco. The real question is: cocaine. Now the evidence here is already really dodgy: toxicology on mummies of an uncertain origin, even if they are real mummies, is incredibly dodgy.

Not to mention there being no evidence of either plant anywhere else in the record, the fact that no other mummies have revealed either nicotine or cocaine in the same way. Even Balabanova didn’t suggest that the Egyptians were trading with the Americas, rather than there were (not extinct) varieties of the two plants in Africa at the time of the pharaohs.

The question I have is what about the rest of the stuff? Egypt is great because the dry conditions mean that a lot survives and people put all sorts of stuff, including high value imports, in tombs. So my question is: if the Egyptians did have trade contacts with the Americas, where’s the rest of the stuff?

What about cacao beans or maize? I mean rice and spices and herbs survive from Egypt, so why are there no other indications of this trade?

Okay so for a time there was a theory that most maritime trade was basically this process of traders sorta just working their way along coastlines looking for a profit wherever they could. The idea was that Greek merchants didn’t really have set ideas of where there was a good market for anything so they just bought and sold whatever and wherever they could.

Nowadays, we know that is not true. Merchants in the ancient world actually had a very complex understanding of the wider market and where they could make a profit. As such, they plied specific routes, often over rather large distances, that they knew would make a profit.

For your question, the answer is that it kinda varies. Strabo tells us that, under the Ptolemies, some 20 ships made the journey to India each year which increased to 100 under the Romans. Now whether or not we accept those exact numbers, the point is that he attests to a certain number of Greek and Roman ships making the journey as far as India each year.

However, there are a couple of points to raise here. Firstly, there is no reason to suspect they personally went any further east than India (it just wouldn’t make any financial or personal sense to do so). Secondly, these Greeks and Romans are probably a minority of shipping.

Instead, the main journeys across the Indian Ocean were probably dominated by the Arabians and Ethiopians (specifically Axum) who understood the winds of the Indian Ocean a lot better than the Greeks. That said we do hear of attempts by Ptolemaic explorers to try and map the winds in the later periods of the dynasty.

So for the Greeks and Romans, trade in the Indian Ocean was probably mostly through intermediaries (buying and selling at, say Adulis or Muscat or Petra). However, plenty of Africans and Arabians were making direct trips across the ocean.

Okay so for context, my specialism is Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt so that is gonna inform my particular evidence. In terms of literature, there are bits and pieces all over the place: Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Diodorus, and a variety of Ptolemaic poets and stuff.

There’s also some contextual evidence such as references to goods that could only have come from abroad. One of the big pieces of evidence is the so-called Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, which is basically a trade guide written by a Roman sailor advising people on the best places to trade and sail in the Red Sea and parts of the Indian Ocean.

We also have papyri which often complements the literary evidence. As a good example, we have one papyrus attesting to the sinking of an elephantegoi, a type of ship developed by Ptolemy II for the acquisition of elephants from East Africa.

Then there’s just archaeology: a Roman coin under a Japanese castle, Greek-inspired art in Southeast Asia, many many pots in India, an Egyptian statue in Zimbabwe just as examples. What’s important to remember is that this doesn’t necessarily indicate that Romans or Greeks necessarily went to these places, but that they were tied into very active and wide ranging trade networks.

Language barriers are always difficult, not least in papyri where they can be in multiple ancient languages and have often been translated into multiple different modern languages. Often the best way is just to have a good knowledge of lots of different languages, especially modern languages in order to access as many translations as possible.

Going forward, I’d really like to work on my Greek and Coptic and try to push digitisation so that papyri are more accessible for future scholars. In other cases, sometimes the beta you can do is find other people who may know relevant languages or have expertise in relevant areas.

Theoretically, I’m of the personal opinion that local, regional, and global narratives are extensions of one another. They can be dealt with separately but a completely picture has to acknowledge that they are neither separate nor isolated.

Personally, I have dealt more with regional understandings of trade than either global or local.

Hope this helps!

This is actually what my postgraduate is on; I’m down to answer any questions I may be able to answer.