Under the government of Claudius the Egyptians were again allowed to coin money; and in his first year begins that historically important series in which every coin is dated with the year of the emperor’s reign.  The coins of the Ptolemies were strictly Greek in their workmanship, and the few Egyptian characters that we see upon them are so much altered by the classic taste of the die-engraver that we hardly know them again.  But it is far otherwise with the coins of the emperors, which are covered with the ornaments, characters, and religious ceremonies of the native Egyptians; and, though the style of art is often bad, they are scarcely equalled by any series of coins whatever in the service they render to the historian.

It was in this reign that the route through Egypt to India first became really known to the Greeks and Romans.  The historian Pliny, who died in 79 A.D., has left us a contemporary account of these early voyages.  “It will not be amiss,” he says in his Natural History, “to set forth the whole of the route from Egypt, which has been stated to us of late, upon information on which reliance may be placed and is here published for the first time.  The subject is one well worthy of our notice, seeing that in no year does India drain our empire of less than five hundred and fifty millions of sesterces [or two million dollars], giving back her own wares in exchange, which are sold among us at fully one hundred times their cost price.

“Two miles distant from Alexandria is the town of Heliopolis.  The distance thence to Koptos, up the Nile, is three hundred and eight miles; the voyage is performed, when the Etesian winds are blowing, in twelve days.  From Koptos the journey is made with the aid of camels, stations being arranged at intervals for the supply of fresh water.  The first of these stations is called Hydreuma, and is distant twenty-two miles; the second is situate on a mountain at a distance of one day’s journey from the last; the third is at a second Hydreuma, distant from Koptos ninety-five miles; the fourth is on a mountain; the next to that is another Hydreuma, that of Apollo, and is distant from Koptos one hundred and eighty-four miles; after which there is another on a mountain; there is then another station at a place called the New Hydreuma, distant from Koptos two hundred and thirty miles; and next to it there is another called the Old Hydreuma, where a detachment is always on guard, with a caravansary that affords lodging for two thousand persons.  The last is distant from the New Hydreuma seven miles.  After leaving it, we come to the city of Berenice, situate upon a harbour of the Red Sea, and distant from Koptos two hundred and fifty-seven miles.  The greater part of this distance is generally travelled by night, on account of the extreme heat, the day being spent at the stations; in consequence of which it takes twelve days to perform the whole journey from Koptos to Berenice.