The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam

157 Pages·2013·2.18 MB·English

by  G.W. Bowersock

THE THRONE OF ADULIS
EMBLEMS OF ANTIQUITY
Font of Life
Ambrose, Augustine, and the Mystery of Baptism
GARRY WILLS
Medusa’s Gaze
The Extraordinary Journey of the Tazza Farnese
MARINA BELOZERSKAYA
The Throne of Adulis
Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam
G. W. BOWERSOCK
THE THRONE of ADULIS
RED SEA WARS ON THE EVE OF ISLAM
G. W. BOWERSOCK
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bowersock, G. W. (Glen
Warren), 1936– The Throne of Adulis : Red Sea wars on the eve of Islam / G.
W. Bowersock.
p. cm.—(Emblems of antiquity)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19973932-5
1. Himyar (Yemen)—History—6th century. 2. Jews—Yemen (Republic)—
Himyar—History—
6th century. 3. Arabian Peninsula—History—To 622. 4. Aksum (Kingdom)—
History 6th century.
5. Red Sea Region—History—6th century. 6. Judaism—Relations—Christianity
—History—6th century. 7. Christianity and other religions—Judaism—History
—6th century. I. Title.
II. Series: Emblems of antiquity.
DS231.B69 2013
939.49—dc23 2012023593
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Contents
Maps and Illustrations
Preface
Abbreviations
Timeline
PROLOGUE
Chapter One
THE THRONE
Chapter Two
A CHRISTIAN TRAVELER IN THE RED SEA
Chapter Three
PTOLEMY’S ELEPHANTS
Chapter Four
THE KINGDOM OF AXUM
Chapter Five
CHRISTIANITY COMES TO AXUM
Chapter Six
JUDAISM COMES TO IMYAR
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Chapter Seven
THE ETHIOPIAN INVASION OF 525
Chapter Eight
ENTRY OF THE GREAT POWERS
Chapter Nine
RECKONING
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Maps and Illustrations
Map 1. Late Antique East Africa, map based on William Y. Adams, Nubia.
Corridor to Africa (Princeton, 1984), p. 384.
Map 2. Late Antique Southwest Arabia, map based on I. Gajda, Le royaume de
imyar à l’époque monothéiste (Paris, 2009), p. 139.
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Fig. 1. Drawing of the Adulis Throne in Ethiopia as given in three manuscripts
of Cosmas Indicopleustes, from W. Wolska-Conus, Cosmas
Indicopleustes, Topographie Chrétienne, Vol. 1, Sources chrétiennes no.
141 (Paris, 1968), p. 367. 13
Fig. 2. Cosmas’ throne as imagined in DAE, p. 66. 19
Fig. 3. RIE Vol. 1, no. 185 bis, text II face B, (Axum). Photo courtesy of Finbarr
Barry Flood.
Fig. 4. RIE Vol. 1, no. 185 bis, complete stele.
Fig. 5. Gold coin of the Christian Axumite king Ousanas, fifth century AD.
Fig. 6. Marco Polo’s reception by Kublai Khan atop four elephants, as shown in
L. Oeconomos, Byzantion 20 (1950), 177–178 with plate 1.
Fig. 7. CIH 541, RdA p. 90.
Fig. 8. The Axum Stele. Photo courtesy of Werner Forman/Art Resource, NY.
Preface
The idea of a short book centered on the inscribed throne at Adulis first occurred
to me over thirty years ago when I read an article that A. F. L. Beeston published
in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 43 (1980), 453–458.
His arresting title was “The Authorship of the Adulis Throne.” Because I had
long recognized that anything from the pen of Freddy Beeston deserved careful
attention, I read his article, which touched upon work that I was doing at the
time on Roman Arabia, with particular interest. Some ten years before that,
Freddy had attended a lecture I gave in Oxford on Roman policy in the Near
East, and his conversation was then, as it always was, convivial, instructive, and
memorable. We met again occasionally after that, but his work was never far
from my desk. Freddy had rightly identified the inscription on the Adulis Throne
as a still unsolved problem. Although he was not concerned with the other, and
much earlier, inscription on the stele that lay beside the throne, his reflections on
the throne text showed his legendary mastery of South Arabian language and
epigraphy.
Like most scholars today, I cannot accept the hypothesis that Freddy
advanced, albeit with due caution, as an interpretation of the throne inscription,
and at this late date there is no point in trying to engage with it or refute it. His
notion that a imyarite king put up the throne and its inscription cannot now
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withstand the powerful evidence of the Ethiopic epigraphy at Axum or of the
many other thrones for which traces survive. But Freddy saw clearly that the
throne at Adulis, which first received widespread attention only when J. W.
McCrindle published his English translation of Cosmas Indicopleustes in 1897,
could be a fundamental document for understanding the complex wars and
religious struggles that played out in the Red Sea area in the three or four
centuries before Islam. Freddy’s article in 1980 was pathbreaking.
When I published my Roman Arabia in 1983, the Jewish kingdom of
converted Arabs in imyar had seemed to me perhaps the most extraordinary of
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all the nations of the late antique Near East. As this kingdom lay outside the
territory of Roman Arabia, I had contemplated a complementary volume entitled
Jewish Arabia, but at that time it seemed that such a title might bring more
misunderstanding than enlightenment. The documentation then was considerably