There are imported into this place from, Egypt, a little wheat and wine, as at Muza (near present day: Mocha, Yemen) ; clothing in the Arabian style, plain and common and most of it spurious; and copper and tin and coral and storax and other things such as go to Muza; and for the King usually wrought gold and silver plate, also horses, images, and thin clothing of fine quality.

[5]Wine jars (amphorae) dating back to the 1st century CE were discovered in Biʾr ʿAlī in 1988, in an underwater excavation along the shores of the Indian Ocean.

The conclusion drawn by researchers, B. Davidde and R. Petriaggi, is that from the mid-1st century CE wine was imported from Italy and Syria upon camels that disembarked from Coptos (Qift) which lies along the banks of the Nile River in Egypt, thence unto ports Myos Hormos – a place that later became known as al-Quṣayr – and Berenike situated on the western shore of the Red Sea, and from there transported by ship to trade centers in Arabia, Ethiopia and India.

It is presumed that Jewish merchants from Hellenistic communities outside of Yemen may have eventually chosen to settle in that place, where they would have been occupied in the trade of aromatics.

[7] This assumption is based on the five-lined Greek inscription that was preserved in the synagogue of ancient Qanīʻ (Biʾr ʿAlī), the content of which being a petition by a man named Kosmās unto the One God (eis theos) that he will protect his caravan (synodia) while traversing the vast wastelands.