Oraea
Encyclopedia
Oraea was the name of a sea port near the modern-day city of Ormara
, Balochistan
province of Pakistan
, important in the Hellenistic era in Indian Ocean
trade. It is mentioned briefly in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
:
Ormara
Ormara is a port city located in the Makran or coastal region of Balochistan Province in Pakistan. It is located 360 km west of Karachi and 230 km east of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea. This port is also mentioned in Periplus of the Erythraean Sea as Oraea.- History :Ormara is an old...
, Balochistan
Balochistan (Pakistan)
Balochistan is one of the four provinces or federating units of Pakistan. With an area of 134,051 mi2 or , it is the largest province of Pakistan, constituting approximately 44% of the total land mass of Pakistan. According to the 1998 population census, Balochistan had a population of...
province of Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, important in the Hellenistic era in Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
trade. It is mentioned briefly in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea or Periplus of the Red Sea is a Greco-Roman periplus, written in Greek, describing navigation and trading opportunities from Roman Egyptian ports like Berenice along the coast of the Red Sea, and others along Northeast Africa and India...
:
- "Beyond the Ommanitic region there is a country also of the Parsidae, of another Kingdom, and the bay of GedrosiaGedrosiaGedrosia from Pashto Gwadar-khua is the hellenized name of an area that corresponds to today's Balochistan. Eastern Balochistan is southwestern province of Pakistan and parts of southwestern and south-central Afghanistan and western Balochistan is divided between Iranian provinces of Hormozgan and...
[Casson: “Gulf of Terabdoi”], from the middle of which a cape juts out into the bay. Here there is a river affording an entrance for ships, with a little market-town at the mouth, called Oraea and back from the place an in-land city, distant a seven days' journey from the sea, in which also is the King's court; it is called ... (probably Rhambacia) [Casson notes the name was inadvertently admitted in the manuscript]. This country yields much wheat, wine, rice and dates; but along the coast there is nothing but bdellium." Periplus, Chap. 38