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Ecology and Beyond 107
text is to be dated to the eleventh century bc, between the XXth
and XXIst dynasties. A certain Unamon (Wen-Amun) was in
charge of furnishing wood for renovating the bark of Amon, the
great god of Upper Egypt. After his arrival in Dor, on the
southern Phoenician coast, he is deprived of a portion of his
goods by one of the men of his own ship, who were Phoenicians.
Arriving in Byblos, he had to conduct a difficult commercial
negotiation to obtain the wood he needed. Then on his way
back, his ship was wrecked on the coast of Cyprus, and he had to
negotiate with local authorities to avoid being the victim of the
ius naufragii. The papyrus then stops. The basic nature of the
document has been much discussed. Is this the authentic report
of real travel or a piece of a novel? Some consider that an
authentic report may have been preserved as a teaching document,
for it presented a lot of difficulties that future travellers
would have to cope with. In any case, the text is highly interesting
insofar as it shows the conclusion of a true international
sales contract (with the prince of Byblos), the existence of a
commonly accepted principle of collective responsibility even
in the absence of personal fault, and the role of written documents
for the identification of the parties (Unamon is supposed
to have credentials with him).
The Unamon document has led to far-reaching speculation
about long-distance commerce in the Bronze Age. Were the
ships of which wrecks have been found the product of such an
‘oriented trade’, organized by states for the benefit of the elite of
rulers? Or did it already exist as ‘free trade’ independently of
states? The question also arises in connection with three Late
Bronze Age wrecks : (1) Ulu Burun near Ka¸s in Lycia (dated
about 1325 bc), which carried at least 18 tons of freight (a very
valuable and varied cargo, including copper and glass beads; the
ship was bound from Ugarit/Cyprus to the Mycenaean world);
(2) the Cape Gelidonya wreck in Lycia (1200–1150 bc, also with
a load of copper); and (3) the Point Iria wreck (in Greece, c.
1200 bc—the ship came from Cyprus); 39 but for now at least no
firm conclusion seems possible.
So it should be stressed that the form of common international
law which emerged in the Greek world, and which
39 CS 347, 607, and 613.