Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/198

 182 AKABICUS SINUS. Kile-yallej, and separated it from the part of Arabia W. of the Arabian Golf. The range on the west side towards Libya he names, in the same way, Libjd Montee. [Abotftu&] [P. S.] ABA'BICUS SINUS, or MARE RUBRUM (6 ^ApaSuchs kSKitos; *Epv6piL ^dXturaa, its nsoal name in LXX. and N. T.: Arab. Bahf'^Kcltum: Red Sea)y the long and narrow golf which extends northwards from the Indian Oeeanj between Arabia on the E. and Africa (^&y«nf»ta, and NtUna, and Egypt) on the W., between 12^ 40* and 30° N. kt and between 43^ 30' and 32° 30^ £. long. Its di- rection is NNW. and SSE. : its length 1400 miles; its greatest breadth nearly 200 miles. It was first known to the ancients in its N. part, that is, in the western bay of the two into which its head is parted by the peninsula of Mt. Sinai (Gulf of Suez). The Israelites, whose miiaculoos passage of this gulf, near its head, is the first great event in their hustoiy as a nation, called it the aedgy tea. It se^ns to have been to this part also (as the earliest known) that the Qreek geographers gave the name of Bed Sea, which was afterwards ex- tended to the whole Indian Ocean ; while the Red Sea itself came to be less often odled by that name, but received ^e distinctive appellation of Arabian Gulf. But it never entirely lost the former name, whidi it now bears exclusively. To find a reason for its being called Red has puzzled geographers, from Strabo (xvL p. 779) to the present day. The best explanation is probably that, from its washing the shores of Arabia Petraea, it was called the Sea of Edonij which the Greeks translated Hterally into ^ ipudpit ddKoffira. The views of the ancients respecting this gulf are various and interesting. Herodotus (ii. 11) calls it a gulf of Arabia, not far from Egypt (i. e. the Nile- valley), flowing in from the sea called 'EpuBp^^ up to Syria, in length forty days' rowing frtim its head to the open sea, and half a day's voyage in its greatest breadth; with afiood and ebb tide every day. In c. 158, he speaks of Necho's canal as cut into the Red Sea, which he directly afterwards calls the Arabian Gulf and the Southern Sea; the mixture of the terms evidently arising from the fact tliat be is speaking of it simply as part of the great sea, which he calls SouiAem, to distinguish it from the Northemj i. e. the Mediterranean. So, m iv. 37, he says that the Persians extend as far as the Southern or Red Sea, ^irl t^ yoririv ddKoffffay r^v 'Efw$p^v ko- XfvfAtfiv, i. e. the Persian Gulf, which he never dis- tinguishes from the Erythraean Sea, in its wider sense; thus, he makes the Euphrates and Tigris fall into that sea (i. 180, vL 20). Again, in iv. 39, speaking of Arabia, as forming, with Persia and Assyria, a great peninsula, jutting out from Asia into' the Red Sea, he distinguishes the Arabian Gulf as its W. boundary; and he extends the Erythraean sea all along the S^ of Asia to India (c. 40). Again, in c. 159, he speaks of Necho's fleet " on the Arabian Gulf, adjacent to the Red Sea" (M if 'Epyepp da- Xifforp); and, in relating the circumnavigation of Africa under that king, he says that Necho, having finished the canal from the Nile to the Arc^nan Guffy caused some Phoenicians to embark for the expedition; and that they, eetiing forth from the Red Sea, navigated the Southern Sea {bpiift^itnts iK T^y ^EpvBpTit daeur<nit IjrXwtv r^v yorlriv dd- Xao-o-av), and so round Libya by the PiUars of Her- cules to Egypt (iv. 42). These passages show that ARABICUS SINUS. Herodotus knew the Red Sea as a narrow gulf of the great ocean, which he supposed to extend S. of Asia and Africa, but that Ms notion of the con- nection between the two was very vague; a view confirmed by the fact that he reguids Arabia as the southernmost country of Asia (iii. 107). Respecting the gulf which forms the western head of the Bed Sea, he had the opportunity of gaining accurate iofiirmation in Lower Egypt, even if he did not se« it himself; and, accordingly, he gives its width cor- rectly as half a day's voyage in its widest part (the average width of the GtdfofSuez is thirty miles) ; but he fell into the error of supposing the whole sea. to be the same average width. For its length he was dependent on the accounts of traders ; and he makes it much too long, if we are to reckon the forty days by his estimate o( 700 stadia, or even 500 stadia, a day, which would give 2,400 and 2,000 gcog. miles respectively. But these are his estimates for eailing, and the former under the moat &vourable circumstances; whereas his forty days are expressly for rowing^ keeping of course near the coast, and that in a narrow sea afiected by strong tides, and full of impediments to navigation. More- over, the Gidf of Bab-^Mandeb should, perhaps, be included in his estimate. Herodotus r^arded the Nile-valley and the Red Sea as originally two parallel and equal gulfs, the one of the Northern Ocean, and the other of the Southern ; of which the former has been filled up by the deposit of the Nile in two myriads of years, a thing which might happen to the latter, if the Nile were by any chance to be turned into it (ii. 11) How little was generally known of the S. part of the Red Sea down to the time of Herodotus, is shown by the fact that Damastes, the logographer, a disciple of Hellamcos, believed it to be a lake. (Strab. i. p. 47.) Another curious conjecture was tiiat of Strabo, the writer on physics, and Eratosthenes, who tried to account for the marine remains in the soil of the countries round the Mediterranean, by supposin|r that the sea had a much higher level, before the disruption of the Pillars of Hercules; and that, until a passage was thus made for it into the Atlantic, its exit was across the Isthmus of Suez into the Red Sea {'EpvOph ddaa<ra). This theory, the hitter part of which was used to explain Homer's account of the voyage of Menelaus to the Aethioplans, la mentioned and opposed by Strabo (i. pp. 38, 39, 57 ; Eratosth. Frag. p. 33, foil. ed. Seidel.) The ancient geographers first became well ac- quainted with the Red Sea under the Ptolemies. About B.C. 100, Agatharchides wrote a fuU de- scription of both coasts, under the title Tlipi rifs ipuBpas bdaaoTiSy of the Ist and 5th books of which we have a full abstract by Photius (Cod. 250, pp. 441 — 460, ed. Bekker; and in Hudson's (Teo- graphi Graeci MinoreSy vol. i.); and we have nume- rous notices of the gulf m Strabo, Mela, Pliny, Pto- lemy, and Agathemems. They describe it as on« of the two great gulfs of the Southern Sea (ii voria da'Acuro-a, Strab. p. 121), or Indian Ocean, to which the names of ^EpvSpii ^dKcuraa and Mare Rubrum were now usually applied, the Red Sea itself bdn^ sometimes called by the same name and sometimes by the distinctive name of Arabian Gulf. Ptolemy carefully distinguishes the tro (viii. 16. § 2); as also does Agathemems, whose Red Sea (^KpvBpit diXjeura-a) is the Gulf of Bab-d-Mandth. It ex- tended from Arabia Petraea to the & extremity of tibe coast of the Troglodyiae in Aethiopia, bang
 * Apd8tos k6tos, Herod., &c ; in some later writers