78. Gr. monai\ l/ . Here the numeral l/ = 30 must be an error for k / = 20, because the distance from Alexandria to Syene, in the neighbourhood of the Great Cataract, is about 600 Roman miles; and because, moreover, in the summing-up of the figures as in the text there is an excess of ten over the given total. Montfaucon has not noticed this discrepancy.
79. Axômis (Auxumê in Ptolemy) is the modern Axum, the capital of Tigré. In the early centuries of our era it was a powerful State, possessing nearly the whole of Abyssinia, a portion of the south-west Red Sea coast and north-western Arabia. It was distant from its seaport, Adulê, which was situated near Annesley Bay, about 120 miles, or an eight days' caravan journey. It was the chief centre of the trade with the interior of Africa. The Greek language was understood and spoken, both by the court and the numerous foreigners who had either settled in it or who resorted to it for trading purposes. In this connection I may quote the following remarks from the pen of M. Vivien de Saint-Martin: "Plusieurs faits bien connus prouvent d'ailleurs l'action direct de l'hellénisme égyptien sur le developpement de la civilisation Axoumite. Ainsi l'auteur du Périple rapporte que le roi d'Axoum qu'il nomine Zoskalès, était familiarisé avec les lettres Grecques; et ce qui montre que cette influence eut un longue durée c'est que deux siècles et demi plus tard on voit la langue Grecque employée a Axoum dans les inscriptions concurremment avec la langue éthiopienne. Ce qui existe encore de l'ancienne Axoum, particulierement ses obélisques, est d'un style grec, bien qu'on y sente une reminiscence égyptienne. Enfin, la religion des Grecs d'Egypte avail penétré dans le royaume d'Axoum, en même temps que leur langue et leurs artistes, car dans les inscriptions le roi éthiopien se dit 'fils d' l'invincible Arès'" ( Journal Asiatique, sixth series, vol. ii, pp. 333-4). Christianity was introduced into Axum in the fourth century by Oedisius and Frumentius, the latter of whom was afterwards appointed its first bishop. Sasu, which is next mentioned, is near the coast, and only 5° to the north of the equator.
80. Ex. xxxvii, 10.
81. The sweet calamus mentioned in Exodus, xxx, 23.
82. The Agau people is the native race spread over the Abyssinian plateau both to east and west of Lake Tana. Montfaucon has the following note: "There is at this day in those parts, namely in the kingdom of the Abyssinian Ethiopians, a region called Auge, where those celebrated fountains of the Nile are, as is related farther on. But what Cosmas here tells us about that singular method of trading practised by the Ethiopians and the Barbarians who speak a different language .... is still in vogue in many parts of Africa, as one may see in books of travel in Africa, and the descriptions given in them of the country." This "dumb commerce", as it was carried on along the Atlantic coast of Africa, is described by Herodotus in his Fourth Book, C. 196. It was practised elsewhere than in Africa, as, for instance, in China (see Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, chap. lxv).
83. Gr. Qe/rmia . Dimin. form of Qe/rmoj , a lupine.
84. From July to September.
85. In the Periplus (c. 6), which is perhaps the earliest work in which the name of Adulê occurs, a list is given of its imports and exports. Pliny says it was the greatest emporium of the Troglodytes----or, as we must now write their name ---- Trogodytes. It is represented by the modern Thulla or Zula, of which the latitude is 15� 13' north. With regard to the Elanitic Gulf, Ela, the Vatican copy has 'Ela_ , the Laurentian, i.e., the Florentine, 'Ahla& . It is the Elath of scripture, the Ailanê of Josephus, and the Elána of Ptolemy.
86. Cosmas was mistaken in thinking that the inscription on this celebrated chair was a continuation of the inscription on the basanite tablet afterwards mentioned, in which Ptolemy Euergetes recorded a series of conquests which he had made in Asia in the earlier years of his reign. Mr. Salt showed that the two inscriptions had nothing in common except their juxtaposition, and that the one on the chair related to conquests made in Ethiopia and Arabia by an Axômite king who lived several centuries after King Ptolemy. Attempts have been made to discover these precious monuments of antiquity, but hitherto without success.
87. Proconnesus is the island now called Marmora, a name which it has given to the sea in which it lies, and for which it is indebted to the celebrity of its rich marble quarries. The marble, which is of a white colour with streaks of black, was used in building the palace of Mausolus, and in paving the floor of the famous church of St. Sophia, erected in Constantinople by the Emperor Justinian.
88. Gr. kaqe/dra . A drawing to show the shape of the chair is given in the Appendix.
89. Justinus I, or the Elder, was Emperor of the East from the year 518 to 527 A.D. He was succeeded by the great Justinian, whom he had adopted, and who reigned till 565.
90. John Malala, whom we cited in a previous note, gives an account of an embassy sent by Justinian to the Emperor of the Axômites, whom he calls Elesbóas: thus fortunately, says Salt in his work descriptive of his Voyage to Abyssinia (p. 468), identifying Anda, Ameda and Elesbóas, as titles of the same sovereign. This author points out that what gave occasion to the expedition of Elesbóas was the murder of St. Aretas by the Homerites. He fixes the death of Aretas in the year 522, which was the fifth year of the Emperor Justinus; the visit of Cosmas to Adulê to about 525, and the expedition against the Homerites to about 530. Montfaucon has here the following note: "In the Vatican copy in the first hand the reading is Ellatzoba&a . This Elesbaan, King of the Axômites, in that expedition which Cosmas mentions, destroyed the kingdom of the Homerites, having defeated Dunaanus, a king of the Jewish religion, who inflicted horrible tortures on the Christians. This Elesbaan was known by another name, Caleb, and was celebrated alike by Greeks and Arabians and Ethiopians, and was enrolled in the number of the saints. He is mentioned by Nonnosus in Photius, by Metaphrastus, by Callistus, and by Abulpharagitis. All this you will find recorded at great length in Job Ludolph, a most accurate expounder and investigator of Ethiopian affairs."
91. Gr. ei0ko&ni . The word ei0kw&n denotes both an image or a figure, and also a picture. In the Greek church the word has only the latter signification.
92. Rhaitô was a place on the Red Sea near Mount Sinai. It is now called Tor. Cosmas, in Book V., says that it was formerly Elim, where the Israelites found twelve springs of water which still existed in his time.
93. He here refers to his drawing of the chair and the tablet, the latter of which is surmounted by the figure of Ptolemy armed with buckler, helmet and spear, and standing in a very warlike attitude. The inscription on the tablet is of great historical value, as it is the only record now extant of the expedition which was made into Asia by Ptolemy Euergetes soon after his succession to the throne in 247 B.C.
94. Ptolemy I., surnamed Soter, was reputed to be the son of Lagus by Arsinoe, while Berenice was the daughter of the same Lagus by Antigone, the niece of Antipater. Ptolemy Soter was regarded by the Macedonians as the son of Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, since his mother had been Philip's concubine, and was pregnant with Ptolemy when she married Lagus. This story seems, however, to have been invented to flatter Ptolemy when he had become a great King. The second Ptolemy, surnamed Philadelphus, married Arsinoe, the daughter of Lysimachus, the King of Thrace, and his wife Nicaea, and by her became the father of Euergetes. He banished her, however, and afterwards, to the great scandal of the Grecian world, married his own sister Arsinoe, who had been the wife of the same Thracian King. By her he had no children.
95. Conf. Periplus, c. 3. "To the south of the Moschophagi, near the sea, lies a small emporium about 4,000 stadia distant from Berenice, and called Ptolemais Theron, from which, in the days of the Ptolemies, the hunters whom they employed used to go up into the interior to catch elephants. This place was very suitable for the purpose, as it lay on the skirts of the great Nubian forest in which elephants abounded. Before it was made a depot for the elephant trade, the Egyptian Kings had to import these animals from Asia; but as the supply was precarious and the cost of their importation very great, Philadelphia made most tempting offers to the Ethiopian elephant hunters to induce them to abstain from eating the animal, or at least to reserve a portion of them for the royal stables. They rejected, however, all his offers, declaring that even for all Egypt they would not forego their favourite luxury."
96. Probably among them some of the 500 which Seleucus Nicator had received from Sandrocottus, the King of Palibothra (now Patna).
97. Ptolemy Euergetes added greatly to his popularity with his Egyptian subjects by restoring to them the statues of their gods, which had been carried away to Persia by Cambyses and some of his successors. For this and other benefits, a synod of priests which assembled at Canopus in the ninth year of his reign passed a decree which conferred upon him and his queen the title of Benefactors. This queen was Berenice, the daughter of Magas, King of Cyrene. She vowed to sacrifice her hair to the gods if her husband returned safe from the expedition recorded in the inscription. The hair was stolen, but according to the great astronomer Conon, the winds wafted it to heaven, and there it forms the constellation Coma Berenices. The inscription was not written by Euergetes himself, but that it is a truthful record is confirmed by a passage in St. Jerome's commentary on Daniel (xi, 8): "in tantum ut Syriam caperet et Ciliciam, superioresque partes trans Euphratem, et propemodum universam Asiam." See Mahaffy's Empire of the Ptolemies, p. 200.
98. Gr. duna&meij a)pesteile dia_ tw~n o)ruxqe/ntwn potamw~n . Dr. Vincent was of opinion that the canals mentioned here were those near Susa, in which Cambyscs had deposited the gods and the other spoils which he had carried away from Egypt. He remarks that Susiana was, like Babylonia, intersected with numerous canals. Bigot, however, to judge from his translation of the clause, supposed that the canals were dug by order of Ptolemy: Et faisant des canaux où il était nécessaire pour rendre à ses troupes le passage plus aisé. Boeckh, again, believed that the words were badly transcribed, and referred to a new expedition, and therefore to Nile canals.
99. In note 2, p. 54, it has been pointed out that the inscription on the chair had no connection with that on the tablet.
100. "If we had the precise date of this inscription," says V. de Saint-Martin, "the chronological question of the origin of the kingdom of Axum would be resolved, for it enables us to accompany, in a sort of way, step by step the formation and development of the Axumite empire. The first and only one of the kings of my race I have brought all these peoples under subjection, says the Prince; and the identification which we are able still to make of one part at least of the districts and tribes mentioned in the inscription shows us his first conquests in the neighbourhood itself of Axum, and at a little distance from that city, which was evidently the seat of his native principality. Then we see his arms carried successively into one after another of the surrounding countries----to the west, between the Takazzé and the great lake Tzana (Tana); to the north, into the low plains watered by the Atbara and the Mareb, and thence still farther into the deserts of Nubia, where the caravans will henceforth have an assured communication from Axum to Egypt; to the south into the hot region which we designate by the very improper name of the kingdom of Adel, into the country of Harrar and of the Somalis, which produces aromatics, and on to the coast region which is washed by the sea of Aden, and which terminates at Cape Guardafui. Finally, crossing over the narrow basin of the Arabian Gulf, the Ethiopian conqueror sends a naval expedition to the opposite coast, and makes his authority to be recognised, if not over Yemen or the country of the Sabaeans (this the text leaves doubtful), at least over a great part of the coast of Hedjaz, in his progress northward to the latitude of Berenice of Egypt, that is to say, over an extent of coast of 6 degrees at least, even towards the 25th parallel." From a memoir read to the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, and published in the Journal Asiatique, 1863, 6th series, vol. ii, pp. 347-8. For the identifications which follow I am chiefly indebted to this memoir. Dr. Glaser has quite recently been able to determine approximately the date of this inscription, as towards the end of the third century of our a era.
101. Salt sees in this word the town of Adé-Gada in the north of Tigré, but Saint-Martin believes that it has a much wider signification. "It is certain", he says, "that Agazi or Agoazi has been at another time the name of the portion of the Abyssinian plateau, the declivity of which commands the Red Sea above Massawa. The name appears to have now fallen into disuse, but the passages which Ludolf (in his Hist. Aeth., I, i, iv, and Commentar., p. 56) has collected prove that even till the seventeenth century it was employed, at least by the learned, as a synonym of Abyssinia. The word remains in use for a different purpose----to designate the ancient language of northern Abyssinia (the ghîz or ghez, at present the learned language)." ----pp. 349, 350. Pliny (vi, 29) mentions a place called Gaza, which lay farther south than the Abalitic Gulf and the Island of Diodorus.
102. Agamê still designates an important province of the plateau of Tigré, directly to the east of the position of Axum. Salt describes it as a rich and fertile territory, owing to its great elevation in a torrid climate.