The Throne of Adulis. Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam By G. W. BOWERSOCK

Abstract

This rather intriguing title heads a stimulating survey and analysis of events in the southern Red Sea region, essentially northern Ethiopia and southwestern Arabia, in the three centuries or so leading up to the birth of Islam in the early years of the seventh century ad. Bowerstock’s starting point for this is the white marble throne—actually somewhat smaller than could accommodate a sitting human being—noted at Adulis, the port on the Red Sea coast of what is now Eritrea, that was the point of entry to the Ethiopian kingdom of Axum which flourished up to the mid-seventh century. The panel of at least one side of the throne was covered with a Greek votive inscription (demonstrating, if nothing else, how Hellenistic culture had penetrated even into the Horn of Africa, so that Greek must have been a kind of lingua franca in the kingdom of the Geʿez, i.e. Old Ethiopic-speaking rulers in Axum), and behind the throne stood a black basalt stele or upright stone, also with a Greek inscription but of a much earlier date than the throne inscription. These two monuments have long disappeared, but we are fortunate to have a detailed description of them, with their texts reproduced, by the sixth century merchant and traveller known to us as Cosmas Indicopleustes ‘the sailor to India’ (though his real, original name is not known) in his Christian Topography. The Adulis throne and its inscription apparently dated from the late second or early third century ad and described the conquests of an Axumite Negus or king on both sides of the Red Sea, westwards from Axum towards the upper Nilotic lands, Nubia and the kingdom of Meroë, and across the Sea into the Ḥimyarite lands of Yemen and western Hadramaut against the people whom the inscription calls ‘Arabitae’.