๐ ๐ผ๐ป๐ฒ๐ ๐ฐ๐ผ๐๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฒ๐, ๐ฎ ๐๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ป๐๐ผ๐ฐ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ป๐ถ๐ฐ ๐ต๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ถ๐๐ฎ๐ด๐ฒ โ ๐ฝ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ ๐ฏ
At the mouth of the Mzikaba River in the Eastern Cape lies the remains of an old shipwreck. Geoff Harris discovered the wreck in the late 1960s and in the 1970s Tim Maggs and Chris Auret identified it as the Sรฃo Bento, a Portuguese vessel that was sailing from India to Europe when it wrecked in 1554. The KwaZulu-Natal Museum acquired several of its cannons in the early 1980s. In the course of conservation work, museum staff made an astonishing discovery.
Deep inside one of the cannons was a secret cache of money cowries. The Sรฃo Bento cowries probably came from the Maldives. They were destined for trade with West Africa, where many billions of cowries were shipped by sea from the 1500s to the 1800s. Some of the Sรฃo Bento cowries are on display in the museum.
There is an evil, dark side to the cowrie trade. The cowrie economy was closely tied to the slave trade, and cowries were often traded directly for slaves. If the Sรฃo Bentoโs journey hadnโt been cut short, its cowries would most likely have been exchanged for human lives.
๐ธThe Sรฃo Bento cowries in the KwaZulu-Natal Museum collections. Photo: Mudzunga Munzhedzi (2019).
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