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Hero image: marbled board covers from Chertezhi k I i II chastyam Trudov Mineralogicheskogo Obshchestva, lithographed geological, mineralogical, and geodetic maps from early systematic exploration, produced for private circulation by the Imperatorskoe Mineralogicheskoe Obshchestvo, 1842.

The name Periplus derives from the Greek verb περιπλέω—“to sail around.” Periploi (περίπλοι) were the voyages and the manuscripts that recorded them. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (Περίπλους τῆς Ἐρυθρᾶς Θαλάσσης), composed in the first century CE, follows the trade from the Red Sea through the Horn of Africa to the Indian subcontinent. At each port it records what sold there and who ruled. Its anonymous author, likely a merchant himself, judged Zoscales, who ruled the coast at Adulis, to be grasping but otherwise upright, and recorded what was imported for the ruler’s use: gold and silver plate made after the fashion of the country, military cloaks and leather garments—alongside the goods the port would buy and sell. It is a character assessment written for traders who would never meet him. Elsewhere he noted which rulers governed through subordinates and how relations between rulers were maintained through embassies. The manuscript recorded not only where to sail and what to trade, but how power worked along the route. The Periplus of Hanno (Περίπλους Ἄννωνος) recorded Carthaginian navigation along the West African coast. Arrian’s Periplus of the Pontus Euxinus (Περίπλους τοῦ Εὐξείνου Πόντου) charted the Black Sea and the Caucasus.