7. See the report by Peacock and others cited above in note 2. Unfortunately, the name Didôros for the island is consistently misspelled in that report as Diodôros. The British team makes a good case for identifying the otherwise unknown site of Samidi, which appears in Cosmas’ drawing, with two mounds north of Adulis that have architectural fragments and large upright stones.
8. CAC, p. 42.
9. RIE vol. 1, no. 191, 1. 36 (p. 273): gbzh.
10. Cosmas Indic., Topogr. Christ. 2. 54–63.
11. DAE vol. 2, pp. 45–69, with RIE vol. 1, p. 22.
12. J. Aliquot, Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie, vol. 11, Mt. Hermon (Beirut, 2008), p. 32.
13. Details may be found in vol. 1 of Wolska-Conus’ 1968 edition of the Topography in the Sources chrétiennes series: p. 366 for the Adulis drawing and pp. 45–50 on the three manuscripts. I am informed that Maja Kominko will soon publish with the Cambridge University Press a substantial book on Cosmas’ work, with a new discussion of the manuscripts and reproduction of the illustrations, which all appear in Wolska-Conus’ edition.
14. DAE vol. 2, p. 45. See also chapter 5 below for further comment on the remains of Axumite thrones.
15. For stêlê in the sense of “statue” in late antiquity see D. Feissel, Chroniques d’épigraphie byzantine 1987–2004 (Paris, 2006), p. 146 [no. 452] and 360 [no. 1185].
16. Cf. RIE vol. 3 A. pp. 26–45, nos. 276 and 277, and FHN vol. 3, pp. 948–953, no. 234. English translations of the text of these inscriptions appear in chapters 3 and 4 below.
17. Cosmas Indic., Topgr. Christ. 2 56.
Chapter 2
1. Cosmas Indic., Topogr. Christ. 2. 54.
2. W. Wolska-Conus, La topographie chrétienne de Cosmas Indicopleustès (Paris, 1962, published under the name Wanda Wolska), pp. 1–11, and her introduction to the edition of the Topogr. Christ. in the series Sources chrétiennes, no. 141, vol. 1 (Paris, 1968), pp. 16–17.
3. Cosmas Indic., Topogr. Christ. 2. 30 (Horn of Africa [Barbaria]) and 49 (Ḥimyar).
4. Cosmas Indic., Topogr. Christ. 3. 65, “in Taprobanê, an island in inner India.”
5. Cf. G. W. Bowersock, with reference to the Syriac life of Rabbula, in Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity, ed. T. Hägg and P. Rousseau (Berkeley, 2000), p. 266.
6. “Palladius,” De gentibus Indiae et Brahmanibus 1.
7. Periplus 30, “an island … called Dioscourides, very big, deserted, and damp, with rivers, crocodiles, many vipers, and enormous lizards.” The name Socotra is presumed to be derived from the—scourid— element of Dioscourides. Cf. Cosmas Indic., Topogr. Christ. 3. 65.
8. See Getzel M. Cohen, The Hellenistic Settlements in Syria, the Red Sea Basin, and North Africa (Berkeley, 2006), pp. 325–326. Cosmas Indic., Topogr. Christ. 2. 65.
9. Christian Julien Robin and Maria Gorea, “Les vestiges antiques de la grotte de Ḥôq (Suqutra, Yémen),” CRAI 2002, pp. 409–445. Other graffiti that appear to be in an Indian language have been entrusted to Mikhail Bukharin, who has also published the first Indian inscription from South Arabia itself: Qāni’ Le port antique du Ḥaḍramawt, ed. J.-F. Salles and A. Sedov (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 399–401.
10. Cosmas Indic., Topogr. Christ. 2. 56 (twenty-five years earlier), 6. 3 (two eclipses).
11. Periplus 5, “Zoskales, fussy about his possessions and always enlarging them, but in other respects an excellent person and well acquainted with Greek letters.”
12. Pliny, Nat. Hist. 6. 34, 174.
13. Pliny, Nat. Hist. 6. 31, 141. Cf. D. W. Roller, The World of Juba II and Kleopatra Selene (London, 2003), ch. 10 (“On Arabia”), pp. 227–243.
14. Cosmas Indic., Topogr. Christ. Prol. 1. Who the Christ-loving Constantine might have been is unknowable, conceivably the Praetorian Prefect of the Orient with that name in the early sixth century (Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 2 [Cambridge, 1980], p. 315).
15. Cosmas Indic., Topogr. Christ. 2. 35–36. Cf. 5. 20–49. Cf. Epist. Hebr. 8. 5.
16. Wolska-Conus 1962 (n. 2 above), pp.129–133, “Cosmas n’abonde pas en précisions géométriques” (p. 133). Cf. Job 38. 37–38. The cube is invoked at Cosmas, Topogr. Christ. 2. 18, with a citation of the Septuagint text of Job.
17. Lionel Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei (Princeton, 1989), pp. 274–276.
18. Periplus 4. Cf. H. H. Scullard, The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World (London, 1974).
Chapter 3
1. Getzel M. Cohen, The Hellenistic Settlements in Syria, the Red Sea Basin, and North Africa (Berkeley, 2006), pp. 338–343 on Philotera and Ptolemaïs. It is suggested that the former was located at Marsa Gawasis and the latter at Aqiq on the coast. M. Bukharin has recently proposed Anfile Bay as the endpoint, mentioned in the Periplus 3, from which ships returned to Ptolemaïs of the Hunts to board elephants after sailing southwards along the coast of Eritrea to pick up obsidian: “The Notion τὸ πέρας τῆς ἀνακομιδῆς and the Location of Ptolemaïs of the Hunts in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea,” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 22 (2011), 219–231. See also the survey of Ptolemaic ports on the Red Sea in the introduction to Timothy Power, The Red Sea from Byzantium to the Caliphate, AD 500–1000 (Cairo, 2012).
2. For the ivory trade under Augustus, see chapter 2 above. On documentation for the elephant industry in the Ptolemaic period, see the important papers by Lionel Casson, “Ptolemy II and the Hunting of African Elephants,” TAPA 123 (1993), 247–260, and Stanley Burstein, “Elephants for Ptolemy II: Ptolemaic Policy in Nubia in the Third Century BC,” in Ptolemy II Philadelphus and his World, ed. P. McKechnie and P. Guillaume, Mnemosyne Supplement 300 (Leiden, 2008), pp. 135–147. See the two papyrus documents presented in FHN vol. 2, nos. 120 and 121, pp. 572–577, on the organization and payment of elephant hunters.
3. The literature on this bizarre practice is immense and by no means concordant. Cf. Keith Hopkins, “Brother-Sister Marriage in Roman Egypt,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22 (1980), 303–354, and Sabine R. Huebner, “Brother-Sister Marriage in Roman Egypt: a Curiosity of Humankind or a Widespread Family Strategy?” JRS 97 (2007), 21–49.
4. Cosmas Indic., Topogr. Christ. 2. 57: “We found, sculpted on the back of the throne, Heracles and Hermes. My companion, the blessed Menas, said that Heracles was a symbol of power and Hermes of wealth. But I, recalling the Acts of the Apostles, objected on one point, saying that it is preferable to consider Hermes a symbol of the logos.” Cosmas cites Acts 14. 12 in support of his view.
5. See the commentary on this inscription in RIE vol. 3 A, pp. 26–32, especially p. 30.
6. Herod. 4. 183. 4; Strabo, 16. 4. 17 (p. 776 C).
7. Pliny, Nat. Hist. 8. 26.
8. FHN II. Nos. 120 (P. Petrie II. 40 a, III 53 g) and 121 (P. Eleph. 28) from 224 and 223 BC respectively. See P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford, 1972), I, pp. 177, with II, pp. 298–299, note 346.
9. RIE III, p. 29 and Fraser, op. cit.
10. Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum, 3rd ed., no. 502.
11. Bert van der Speck and Irving Finkel have placed an invaluable account of the chronicle and related texts in their preliminary study posted on the Internet at http://www.livius.org/cg-cm/chronicles/bchp-ptolemy_iii/bchp_ptolemy_iii_02.html. The papyrus on Ptolemy’s reception at Seleuceia is from Gurob in the Fayyum (FGH 160). The cuneiform tablet is BM 34428. For these events, see, above all, H. Hauben, “L’expédition de Ptolémée III en Orient et la sédition domestique de 245 av: J.-C.,” Archiv für Papyrologie 36 (1990), 29–37.
12. G. W. Bowersock, Roman Arabia (Cambridge MA, 1983), pp. 48–49.
Chapter 4
1. RIE vol. 1, nos. 269, 270, 270 bis, 286, 286 A (pp. 362, 365, 369, 385, 387).
2. See chapter 2 above.
3. For the coinage, CAC.
4. For opinions on the various toponyms and ethnonyms, see the commentaries in FHN vol. 3, pp. 952–953 and in RIE vol. 3 A, pp. 35–43.
5. For No
nnosus’ narrative see the Appendix to the present work.
6. Herod. 2. 29 (Meroë as a great metropolis of Ethiopians).
7. Ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, trans. F. Rosenthal, 2nd ed. (Princeton, 1967), vol. 1, pp. 21–22: “He [an early Yemeni king] gave them the name Berbers when he heard their jargon and asked what that ‘barbarah’ was.”
8. Periplus 5.
9. Philostr., Vit. Apoll. 6. 1 (Meroë in Ethiopia), 6. 4 (for the etymology).
10. For Syriac apocalyptic, particularly with reference to Psalms 68. 31, see G. W. Bowersock, “Helena’s Bridle, Ethiopian Christianity, and Syriac Apocalyptic,” in Studia Patristica vol. 45 (2010), pp. 211–220.
11. Ael. Arist., To Rome, Orat. 26 (Keil). 70.
12. Cf. F. Fontanella, Elio Aristide: A Roma, traduzione e commento (Pisa, 2007), p. 130.
13. C. Phillips, W. Facey, and F. Villeneuve, “Une inscription latine de l’archipel Farasân (sud de la mer Rouge) et son contexte archéologique et historique,” Arabia 2 (2004), 143–190, with figs. 63–67, and F. Villeneuve, “Une inscription latine sur l’archipel Farasân, Arabie Séoudite, sud de la mer Rouge,” CRAI 2004, 419–429.
14. Christian Robin, “La première intervention abyssine en Arabie méridionale,” Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Addis Ababa, 1989), pp. 157–162.
15. See Robin, note above, p. 152–154 for Gadara as malik and comparable Arabian inscriptions with references to ḥabashat. For Gadara in Ethiopia (Addi Gelemo in Tigray), RIE no. 180, pp. 219–220: gdr / ngśy / ’ksm.
16. Cf. J. Desanges, “Toujours Afrique apporte fait nouveau,” Scripta Minora (Paris, 1999), p. 355: “Une datation à la fin du IIe siècle serait historiquement plus facile à admettre, tout en ménageant la priorité dans ces conquêtes hautement revendiquée par le roi d’Axoum anonyme.”
17. Hélène Cuvigny and Christian Robin, “Des Kinaidokolpites dans un ostracon grec du désert oriental (Égypte),” Topoi 6 1996), 697–720.
18. Steph. Byz., Ethnika s.v. Zadramē. The capital of the Kinaidocolpitai is said to have been called Zadramē. Stephanus claims to be excerpting the Periplus of Marcianus of Heraclea, whose date as well as the date of the source he was using are both unknown. Cf. Stefano Belfiore (ed.), Il Geografo e l’Editore: Marciano di Eraclea e I Peripli Antichi (Rome, 2011) with citation on p. 111.
19. Gianfranco Fiaccadori, “Sembrouthes ‘Gran Re’ (DAE IV 3 = RIÉth 275): Per la storia del primo ellenismo aksumita,” La Parola del Passato 335 (2004), 103–157.
20. M. Bukharin has suggested that Romans may have been involved if it was Gadara who went to Leukê Kômê: Vestinik Drevneii Istorii 258 (2006), 3–13, on which see SEG 56. 2020.
21. RIE vol. 1, no. 269, p. 362.
22. RIE vol. 1, no. 286, p. 385, and no. 286 A, p. 387.
23. William Y. Adams, Nubia. Corridor to Africa (Princeton, 1984), p. 383.
24. Heliodorus, Aethiop. 10. 26.
25. For a discussion of this material, with an argument for the date of the composition of the Aethiopica, see G. W. Bowersock, Fiction as History (Berkeley, 1994), pp. 149–160.
26. CAC, pp. 28–29.
27. CAC, pp. 29–30, with plates 3–5 [plate 3 for the gold coin with the crown on obverse].
28. RIE vol. 1, nos. 185 and 185 bis (pp. 241–250), no. 186 (pp. 250–254), no. 187 (pp. 255–258), no. 188 (pp. 258–261), no. 270 (pp. 363–367), 270. bis (pp. 367–370).
Chapter 5
1. For the emergence of Ḥimyar in South Arabia see Iwona Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar à l’époque monothéiste (Paris, 2009), pp. 35–38.
2. See many references in the epigraphy of the Bosporan kingdoms: Corpus Inscriptionum Regni Bosporani (Moscow, 1965), nos. 28. Pharnaces), 31 (Mithridates), 1048 (Sauromates I). Rhescuporis II and III show “king from ancestor kings, ek progonôn basileôn” (nos. 1047 and 53). At Palmyra Herodianus and Odainathus adopted the “king of kings,” as discussed by M. Gawlikowski, “Odainat et Hérodien, rois des rois,” Mélanges de l’Université St. Joseph 60 (2007), 289–311, with presumed imitation of Persian titulature.
3. For the pagan texts with Ares and Maḥrem, see the documents cited in n. 28 at the end of the previous chapter.
4. Rufinus, Hist. Eccles. 2. 5. 14, on which see A. Dihle, Umstrittene Daten (Cologne, 1965), pp. 36–64 (“Frumentios und Ezana”), and also A. Muravyov, “Pervaya volna khristianizatsii,” Vestnik Drevneii Istorii 261 (2009), pp. 182–185.
5. Athanas., Apol. 29. 31.
6. CAC, p. 32. An excellent summary account of the Christianization of Axum may be found in Garth Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Princeton, 1993), pp. 109–116, although this came too soon after RIE vol. 1 to take account of it and antedates RIE vol. 3.
7. DAE vol. 2, pp. 45–69.
8. RIE vol. 1, no. 185, pp. 241–245 (the two Ethiopic texts), no. 270, pp. 363–367 (Greek), with full bibliography, from Salt onwards, in both places. The sumptuous presentation in DAE vol 4., nos. 4, 6, and 7 is still invaluable and incorporates German translations of the three texts in parallel columns.
9. RIE. vol. 1, no. 185 bis, pp. 246–250 (Ethiopic), no. 270 bis (Greek), pp. 367–370. Fig. 3 shows the upper text in Ge‘ez.
10. RIE vol. 1, no. 189, pp. 263–267 (vocalized Ethiopic but untranslated; for a German translation and commentary, DAE no. 11, with a corrected reading at the end of line 1 in RIE, loc. cit.). The Greek inscription is RIE vol 1., no. 271, pp. 370–372. For an English rendering of the Greek, FHN vol. 3, no. 299, pp. 1100–1103.
11. Procop., Wars I. 19. 27–33. Procopius says that before their resettlement on the Nile in lower Nubia the Nobatai were living “in the vicinity of the city Oasis” (amphi polin Oasin) but a few lines after that he refers to their being “in the vicinity of the Oasis” (amphi tên Oasin). Since there was no city named Oasis, the reference must be to the region of the greater and lesser oases of the Thebaid (Khargeh and Dakhleh). I suspect that the word polin in the first reference is intrusive and should be deleted.
12. RIE vol. 1, no. 190, pp. 268–271.
13. See RIE vol. 2, plate 125 for the top of the Ethiopic inscription, and plate 128 for the cross at the bottom of the very short lines on the side of the block.
14. RIE vol. 1, no. 192, pp. 274–278.
15. S. Munro-Hay, “A New Gold Coin of King MḤDYS of Aksum,” Numismatic Chronicle 155 (1995), 275–277.
16. See G. W. Bowersock, Studia Patristica 45 (2010), 218–219.
Chapter 6
1. See the excellent overview of the historical record in Christian Robin’s chapter, “L’antiquité” and, for the epigraphical testimony, his chapter “Langues et écritures” in the catalogue of the 2010 Louvre exhibition, RdA, pp. 81–99 and 119–131.
2. RIE vol. 1, nos. 269 (pp. 362–363), 286 (pp. 385–386).
3. Christian Robin, “Les Arabes de Ḥimyar, ‘des Romains’ et des Perses (IIIe—VIe siècles de l’ère chrétienne),” Semitica et Classica 1 (2008), 167–202, especially p. 171, and Iwona Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar à l’époque monothéiste (Paris, 2009), pp. 47–58.
4. G. W. Bowersock, “The New Greek Inscription from South Yemen,” in Qāni’ Le port antique du Ḥaḍramawt entre la Méditerranée, l’Afrique et l’Inde, Preliminary Reports of the Russian Archaeological Mission to the Republic of Yemen, vol. IV (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 393–396. Cf. the remarks of the excavator, A. Sedov, on p. 380 of the same volume.
5. Gianfranco Fiaccadori, Teofilo Indiano (Ravenna, 1992).
6. On Yathrib’s Jewish population, Fred M. Donner, Muhammad and the Believers at the Origins of Islam (Cambridge MA, 2010), p. 35. For the tradition about exiles from the Vespasianic capture of Jerusalem, see A. Bausi and A. Gori, Tradizioni orientali del Martirio di Areta (Florence, 2006), p. 121, with the note on the Ethiopic version of the Martyrium.
7. Toufic Fahd, Le Panthéon de l’Arabie centrale à la veille de l’Hégire (Paris, 1968).
8. The best edition of this fundamental work remains that of Carl Bezold, Kebra Nagast: die Herrlichkeit der Könige, Abhandlungen der I Kl. der Kön. Akad. d. Wissensch. 23, Bd. I (Munich, 1905), with accompanying German translation. The French translation of G. Colin (Geneva, 2002) is serviceable, but the English version by E. A. Wallis Budge (London, 1922) should be avoided.
9. For a summary account see A. H. M. Jones and Elizabeth Munroe, A History of Ethiopia (Oxford, 1966), pp. 14–18.
10. For the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon, I Kings 10. 1–13, and for the Queen of the South’s identical visit to him, Matth. 12. 42 and Luke 11. 31. See also Josephus., Ant. 2. 249 and Acta Apost. 8. 27. Cf. G. W. Bowersock, “Helena’s Bridle, Ethiopian Christianity, and Syriac Apocalyptic,” Studia Patristica 45 (2010), 211–220, esp. note 8 on Kandake.
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