The Greek word Matthew uses is magoi, a term associated with eastern scholars, priests, astrologers, dream interpreters, and royal advisors. These were not figures from a single defined tradition. The ancient Near East contained many cultures that closely observed the heavens and placed profound significance on celestial events. Babylon, Persia, Arabia, and the kingdoms farther east all possessed astronomical and astrological traditions familiar to educated court elites. During the late first century BC and early first century AD, a network of trade routes linked these eastern lands with Judaea and the Roman world. Merchants, diplomats, religious ideas, luxury goods, and information traveled continuously along these routes. The Nabataeans controlled the frankincense and myrrh trade from southern Arabia through Petra to the Mediterranean. The Indo-Parthian kingdoms of the eastern frontier received goods from India and channeled them westward. The Indo-Scythian realm where the Azes dynasty ruled sat at the crossroads where Greek, Persian, Indian, and Central Asian traditions met after Alexander the Great's armies passed through. This was not a closed or isolated world. It was one of the most interconnected trading networks the ancient Mediterranean had ever seen, and the Nativity story is geographically and historically embedded within it. The Wise Men traveled because travel across this network was possible, because people with resources and purpose moved along those routes regularly, and because what lay at the other end was already known to eastern courts through the same networks that carried news, goods, and ideas in both directions.