African Amphorae in the East: A View from Alexandria

Alexandria was like all the other great cities of antiquity first and foremost, an enormous consumption site. Great quantities of basic foodstuffs had to be imported to meet the demands of a large population. Trade in oil, wine and other commodities, has left well recognised trail in archaeological record – discarded amphorae used for their transport. While Alexandrian relations with the Levant and Aegean in the Roman period have been relatively well studied, those with the western part of the Mediterranean remain largely neglected. The paper offers an overview of all basic amphorae types identified at the Kom el-Dikka site in Alexandria and originating from various agricultural regions of North Africa stretching from Cirenaica to Mauretania. All these examples ranging from the 1st to the 7th centuries AD, reflecting a once thriving traffic in essential foodstuffs are also briefly discussed in wider context of the mainstream overseas trade relations of the period.