Road station

Arsinoe

Aschderad (Miller)

At the northern end of the Gulf of Suez, near where the canal of Ptolemy met the sea, lay Arsinoe, founded by Ptolemy the Second and named after his sister and wife. Strabo calls it the chief naval base on the Red Sea, and Pliny describes it as a hub where several overland routes from Egypt met, one of them from Pelusium. Even in antiquity people were unsure whether Arsinoe, Cleopatris and Clysma were separate places; the council of Chalcedon in 451 treats Cleopatris and Arsinoe as one. On the map the road from Babylonia reaches it in two steps that hint at missing stations.

Find Arsinoe on the interactive Roman map →

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