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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GinoLR, post: 24815991, member: 128351&quot;]The Seleucids imported their elephants from India. The Ptolemies, Seleucid&#039;s arch-rivals, could not rely on the same commercial connexion. They sent elephant-hunters to Nubia (some of them carve their names on Ramses II statues in Abu Simbel), worked with the Kingdom of Meroe, but they sent also hunters south of the Red Sea, on the Sudanese, Eritrean and probably also Somali coast. The elephant hunters were Greek white hunters, for the locals, according to Agatharchides I think, just hunted elephants for ivory and did not master the techniques of catching them alive, taming them and bringing them into captivity. </p><p>These East African elephants were brought to Greek ports on the Red Sea, for example <i>Ptolemais Theron</i> (&quot;Ptolemais of the Hunts&quot;) south of today&#039;s Port Soudan, but there were many others further south bearing the names of great hunters : the Hunting Ground of Pythangelos, the Lookout Post of Leon, the Lookout Post of Demetrios, the Grove and Harbor of Eumenes, etc. There, the elephants were embarked aboard special large ships called &quot;<i>elephantegos</i>&quot;, &quot;elephant-carrier&quot;. There were not many ships of this class, a letter on papyrus of the early 3rd c. BC told the crew of a wrecked elephantegos stranded somewhere that they had to wait for rescue until another elephantegos was repared and made ready in Berenike. </p><p>The elephants disembarked in Berenike and had to walk to the Nile through the Oriental desert. </p><p>In 217 BC a great battle was fought at Raphia (Today&#039;s Rafah, at the south border of the Gaza strip), Ptolemy IV vs Antiochus III. Antiochus had 102 elephants, Ptolemy had 73. Curiously, the historian Polybius (2nd c. BC) wrote that Antiochus&#039; Indian elephants were taller than Ptolemy&#039;s African elephants. That&#039;s not what we can see now, African species are taller. Specialists still do not agree about this : was Polybius mistaken? Did the Egyptians use a now extinct smaller species?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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