"After sailing along the coast of Arabia for a distance of two thousand four hundred stadia. one comes to Gerrha. a city situated on a deep gulf; it is inhabited by Chaldaeans, exiles from Babylon… The city is two hundred stadia from the sea; and the Gerrhaeans traffic by land for the most pan in Arabian merchandise and aromatics, though Aristobulus says, on the contrary, that the Gerrhaeans import most of their cargoes on rafts to Babylonia, and thence sail up the Euphrates with them to Thapsacus, and then convey them by land to all pans of the country" (Strabo XVl.3.3).

 "Cattabania produces frankincense and Chatramotitis produces myrrh, and both these and the other aromatics are bartered by the merchants. These arrive there in seventy days from Aelana…, but the Gerrhaeans arrive at Chatramotitis in ten days" (Strabo XVl.4.4).

 —

 When I began to explore the deep history of the greater Indian Ocean world, the most fascinating thing for me was the discovery of forgotten peoples and lost nations, who now only existed – memorialized and fossilized – in old books.

While, when we study the long march of history, our attention is grasped by grand and glorious empires, it is more often people who lived on the edges of these empires who are the more interesting.
— Read on erytheanhorizons.wordpress.com/2022/02/05/lost-nations-of-the-erythean-world-the-gerrhaeans/

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