Indian Spices and Drugs in the Hellenistic World

Sureshkumar Muthukumaran

This talk focuses on the burgeoning demand for South Asian spices, condiments and drugs in the Middle East and the Mediterranean in the two centuries after Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Achaemenid Persian empire. We will consider the manifold uses for these spices in the Middle East and the Mediterranean as well as the political conditions and infrastructural investments which allowed for the regularisation of long-distance trade.