103. Saint-Martin thinks that the name Sigye is connected with Tzigam, the name of a large Agau tribe now seated to the west of Lake Tzana, but which its own traditions connect with the Agaus of the Takazzé. The Agaou people, which is the aboriginal race of the Abyssinian plateau, has been in conflict at all the epochs of history with the lords of the country of Axum, now Tigré. ---- pp. 350-1.
104. The position of Aua is fixed by the itinerary of Nonnosus, the envoy of Justinian to the King of Axum in 531, only eleven or twelve years after the time when Cosmas visited those shores. In this itinerary Aue is a district situated half-way between Adulê and Axum. The name still exists in that of the city of Adoua (Ad'Oua = city of Oua) the present capital of Tigré (p. 351). Nonnosus on his return from Axum wrote a history of his embassy, which has perished, but of which we have an abridgement by Photius, reprinted in the Bonn Collection of the Byzantine writers. Bent thinks Aua is perhaps in Yeha.
105. Montfaucon here notes that Tiamô is read Tiama in the Vatican copy, and that Tziamô was called also Tziama. He says that Tzama is the name by which a certain prefecture of the kingdom of Tigré, immediately adjacent to Agamê, is to this day designated. Both Salt and Saint-Martin confirm this identification, and the latter recognises Gambela in the valley of Iambela in the province of Enderta. The name of Tiamô, he adds, recurs elsewhere several times in Abyssinian geographical inscriptions.
106. The words within brackets appear, says Montfaucon, to have formed a marginal note which has crept into the text of Cosmas. By the Nile here is not meant the Nile proper, but its great eastern tributary the Takazze, which, however, before joining the Nile unites with the Atbara (the Astaboras of the ancients) in Nubia.
107. Zingabene, Angabe, and Tiama cannot now be identified, but Athagaus and Kalaa seem to correspond respectively to Addago and Kalawe, two districts which lie to the left of the Takazze below the mountains of Semen. Dillmann conjectures that Zingabene was written for Zingarene, and so identical with Zangaren in Hamasen. Dr. Glaser suggests that Kalaa may be the Koloe of the Periplus, which describes it as a town three days' journey inland from Adulê, and a five days' journey from Axum. With regard to the Athagaus, Dillmann agrees with Montfaucon in taking them to be a part of the very ancient Agau people, perhaps those in Lasta.
108. For Semenai the Vatican copy reads Samine. The inscription gives this name in exact accordance with its present orthography. Samen, or Semen, with its lofty mountains which rise to the height of 15,000 ft. above the sea-level, is the most remarkable region in all Abyssinia.
109. A little below, Cosmas tells us that in his time these three provinces still bore the same names as in the inscription, from which it would appear that these were well-known districts. Their names have now disappeared, or are too much changed to be recognisable. Saint-Martin, however, conjectures that Lazine may be the land of Basena on the northern frontier of Tigré, at the foot of the last declivities of the plateau. Basena, he adds, is in the direction of the Taka, the great oasis of eastern Nubia, whereto the inscription proceeds to lead us.
110. "Bega refers to the ancient race of the Bedjas or Bodjas (which the Arab authors call also Boga), who, under the actual name of Bicharieh cover with their nomadic tribes a great part of the sandy regions of Nubia between the Nile and the Red Sea"( l . c. p. 354). In a note it is pointed out that Bicharieh and Bedja are but two forms of the same name. Dr. D. H. Müller, of Vienna, identifies the Bega with the Bougaitai of the Greek inscription of Axum.
111. "The Tangaites, at the time to which the inscription takes us back, were the most powerful of the Bedja tribes; this tribe has given its name to the country of Taka, which is watered and fertilised by the united waters of the Takazze and Atbara. Tangaites, for Tanga or Taka, is a form purely Greek" ( l . c. p. 354).
112. The fact that these two tribes lived in a mountainous region showed that their position was eastward toward the coast of the Red Sea.
113. "The rest of the inscription is concerned with expeditions all different. Here the Axumite conqueror conducts us towards the country of Barbara, where incense grows, that is to say, into the cinnamon-bearing country of the Greeks and Romans. He then subdues the peoples of Sesea, the Rhausi, and the Solate, and obliges the last to watch over the security of the coast. With the exception of the Solate, of whom the identification is uncertain, the other names mentioned in this part of the inscription are recognisable without difficulty. Barbara, or Berbera, has been at all times the appellation of a part of this country stretching towards the Indian Ocean. It is on this side the last extension of a name of aboriginal race and of primordial origin of which we find the traces disseminated through a great portion of the valley of the Nile, and through all the north of Africa, and we know that Berbera remains the name of the principal part of the coast of Somal, right opposite Aden. Sesea ought to designate a part at least of the Somali people, of which one of the principal tribes bears still the name of Issa, which even appears to have been the patronymic appellation of the race. Cosmas, who beyond question employs the name as it was pronounced by the Greek sailors in these seas, departs still further from the proper Ethnic name in writing Sasu. It was, he says, the last country of Ethiopia towards the Erythraean Sea, and he informs us that in his time the kings of Axum sent thither annual caravans which brought back much gold. Lastly, the name of the Rhausi (who very probably are no others than the Rhapsii of Ptolemy, iv, viii) exists with but little alteration in that of the Arousi, a large tribe in the interior to the south of Abyssinia, one of those which carry on a regular traffic with the coast" ( l . c. pp. 354-5). Sasu, as Dr. Glaser tells us, lay in the south-east part of the Somali peninsula, not far from the Italian colony Hobia (Oppia, Obbia), and consequently quite in the eastern portion of the conquests made by the king who was the author of the inscription. This decision as to the position of Sasu was indubitably correct, but was utterly inconsistent with the statement in the inscription that Ethiopia and Sasu formed the western boundary of his dominions. Here was indeed a Gordian knot to untie, and Dr. Glaser's peace of mind was quite taken away until he found a solution, namely, that not Sasu at all, but Kasu is to be read. Kasu, he explains, was shown by Dillmann to be a far westward territory, since in the Axumite inscription in which it occurs, it admits of being located only in or near Meroe. "Now", he exclaims, "did all at a stroke become clear. The king penetrated westward to Ethiopia and Kasu, that is, into the region of Khartum."
114. The name of this people is found in Ptolemy, and written exactly as here. Saint-Martin takes them to have been a branch of the great tribe of Kinda, to which the tribe of Kelb united itself. They occupied Hedjaz, which is now the Holy Land of Arabia, containing as it does the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina.
115. Towards the northern frontier of the Cinaedocolpitae was situated the port and trading mart of Leucê Comê, from which at one time the costly wares received from India and Arabia were transmitted to Petra of the Nabathaeans. It has been identified with the port called Hauara [lat. 24° 59' N., long. 37° 16' E.]. Cosmas in a note says, that in the country of the Blemmyes there is a village ( Kw&mh ) called Leucoge, which he erroneously takes to be Leucê Comê, since the Blemmyes lived not in Arabia but Nubia, on the other side of the Red Sea.
116. Saint-Martin, commenting on the geography of this passage, says: "This shows, first, that the Axumites properly called (that is to say, the inhabitants of our actual Tigré", which is the north-east part of the Abyssinian plateau) had not yet adopted for themselves the Greek appellation of Ethiopians, as they have since done. The name of Saso, which appears there for the first time, carries us to the unknown countries of the West; it is then by a manifest confusion that Cosmas, deceived by an apparent relation, has confounded it with the maritime country of Sesea. Mr. Harris, who was sent to the Ras du Choa in 1842 by the East India Company, with a view to form commercial relations with this powerful chief of southern Abyssinia, among the items of information that he collected during his stay about the countries of the Nile basin still more southern, heard mention of a great kingdom of Sousa, the most powerful, he was told, of the native states towards the south and south-west of the Choa."----( l . c. pp. 357-8). Saint-Martin takes this country, of which Mr. Harris had heard, to be Kafa, which he thinks is the name given to it by the Galla, while Sousa is its ancient and indigenous name. Dr. Glaser's solution of the difficulty regarding Sasu, given in note 1, p. 63, is, however, preferable. Saint-Martin follows up his examination of the geography of the inscription with an attempt to ascertain its date, and this he is led to assign either to the earlier or to the later half of the second century of our aera. Professor Dillmann, on the other hand, assigned to the inscription a much earlier date, being of opinion that the king whose conquests it records reigned in Axum before Zoskales (called Zahakale in the list of Axumite kings), who filled the throne at the time when the author of the Periplus, from whom we learn the fact, was making trading voyages in the Erythraean Sea. As these voyages appear to have been made between A.D. 56 and A.D. 71, the inscription would thus date as far back as about the beginning of the Christian aera. Professor D. H. Müller, of Vienna, again, thinks that the author of the inscription was no other than this Zoskales himself, who is described in the Periplus as an ambitious man, and well versed in Greek literature ( tou plei/onoj e0cexo&menoj . . . kai\ gramma&twn 9Ellhnikw~n e1mpeiroj ). Dr. Glaser, however, who is one of the greatest living authorities on questions of Arabian history, which he has assiduously studied, by the light of numerous inscriptions found in various parts of Arabia, refers the inscription in question to the closing years of the third Christian century. Some of the conquests of the Axumite king lay in Arabia, and Dr. Glaser finds that the date he has fixed is that which is most compatible with ascertained facts, both of Arabian and Axumite history. To this conclusion he has also been guided by statements advanced in the Periplus, and the famous bilingual Axumite inscription.
117. The Vatican copy has Salmene.
118. Antigonus, Perdiccas, Seleucus Nicator, and Ptolemy.
119. Philometor was the sixth of the Ptolemies, and Dionysus, the brother of the celebrated Cleopatra, was the twelfth.
120. Gr. a)pografh_ ----the term used in Luke ii, 2.
121. Luke i, 32.
122. Gr. basi/leioi ---- Montfaucon here translates this word by imperium (and in the next sentence by regnum ) leaving basilei/a , which almost immediately follows, unrendered. It is evident, however, that in each sentence basi/leion means the reigning dynasty , ge/noj being understood.
123. The monarch of Persia when Cosmas wrote was the great Khosru, or Chosroes I, as he is called by the Greeks. His reign extended from A.D. 531 till A.D. 579. He belonged to the dynasty of the Sassanidae, which was founded by Ardishir, the Artaxerxes of the Greeks and Romans, in A.D. 226. The family to which he belonged was Persian, and professed the faith of Zoroaster and his priests the Magi.
124. Arsaces, the founder of the Parthian power, revolted from the Syrian yoke in the reign of Antiochus II, in the year B.C. 250. One of his successors, Mithridates I, who reigned from B.C. 174 to B.C. 136, made extensive conquests, and exalted the Parthian name to great glory. Before the Christian aera his successors had extended their rule along the east coast of Arabia, and also along the southern, so that they possessed the frankincense country.
125. In the year B.C. 40, under Pacorus, the son of the Parthian King Orodes I.
126. Eusebius, in his Ecclesiastical History, informs us that Thomas, one of the twelve Apostles, sent Thaddeus, who was reckoned among the seventy disciples of Christ, to Edessa, as a preacher and evangelist of the doctrine of Christ.---- Book I, c. 13. Edessa, which was a town of great importance, situated in the northern extremity of Mesopotamia, in the province of Osrhoene, played a very prominent part in the early history of the Christian Church.
127. I Pet. v, 13.