Comparable to gold and gems, spices were among the most valued items of trade in ancient and medieval times.1 The ancient Egyptians used spices for food-flavoring, in cosmetics, and for embalming their dead as early as in 3500 BC. Soon, the use of spices spread through the Middle East to the eastern Mediterranean and Europe; spices from China, Indonesia, India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) were originally transported overland by donkeys or camel caravans.
For almost five millennia, Arab middlemen controlled the spice trade, before the band of European explorers, including Ferdinand Magellan, Vasco da Gama and Bartolomeu Dias chanced upon a sea route leading to the spice-rich East.2
