Page:The Northern Ḥeǧâz (1926).djvu/321

 wild camels, deer, and gazelles. Even lions, panthers, and wolves are numerous. Opposite this plain is situated the island called Dia. From there extends a long bay, for a distance of five hundred stades, surrounded by mountains and with a very difficult entrance. The surrounding population hunt land animals. Still farther on there are three islands, uninhabited but containing olives, not like those in our country but native ones which are called Ethiopian olives, the resinous sap of which is used medicinally. Then there extends a stony shore and beyond it, for a distance of nearly a thousand stades, an inhospitable coast with very rare harbors and anchorages.—

The seal island of Artemidorus is identical with the duck island of Agatharchides and thus in all probability with the modern island of Tîrân. Artemidorus calls the Gulf of al-ʻAḳaba the Aelanitic, not the Laeanitic Gulf. Both names are accurate. Aelanites is the older name derived from the harbor of Ajla or Aela. Laeanites refers to the clan of the Leḥjân, to whom the whole of the surrounding district belonged from the fifth to the third century before Christ. As in the gulf itself there are no islands and the Nabataeans from the gulf could not, even on rafts, get near to the Egyptian ships which sailed from the Gulf of Heroöpolis, or Gulf of Suez, we must conclude that according to Artemidorus the Nabataeans inhabited the islands situated to the south and southeast of the Gulf of al-ʻAḳaba. The island of Dia is perhaps identical with the island of Ṣenâfîr.

Strabo, op. cit., XVI, 4: 26, writes that in the Nabataean land various fruits flourish in addition to olives and that the inhabitants use sesame oil. The sheep have white wool and the oxen are big. Horses are lacking but are replaced by camels. The Nabataeans are clad only in a loin cloth without a lower garment and sandals.—

If there is a lack of horses in the Nabataean land then it can contain neither mules or hinnies. The herds of, which according to Agatharchides and Artemidorus (see above pp. and ) graze in the land of the Bythemani, should not, therefore, be translated mules or half-asses, but wild asses, of which there used to be large numbers in Arabia.

Pliny, Nat. hist., VI, 156, describes the “inner” gulf of the Red Sea, near which the Laeanitae settled and to which they gave their name. Their royal city was called Hagra. Near the gulf, he says, was situated the town of Laeana, or, as others say, Aelana, whence the gulf itself was called the Laeanitic by some writers, the Aelanitic by others. Thus Artemidorus calls it the Aelanitic, while Iuba calls it the Laeanitic.

Pliny, op. cit., V, 65, writes that one gulf of the Red Sea extending to Egypt is called the Heroöpolitic, the other the Aelanitic. The two towns of Aelana and Gaza near our sea (the Mediterranean) are 150,000 paces apart.

The Laeanitae are identical with the Leḥjân, and their main city Hagra must, as we have seen, be located at al-Ḥeǧr. The city situated on the gulf itself was not called Laeana but Aelana or Aela (Aila). From it Gaza is 220 kilometers, or nearly 150 Roman miles away. Both Agatharchides and Diodorus call the Gulf of al-ʻAḳaba the Laeanitic, Pliny calls it both Laeanitic and Aelanitic, and Strabo only Aelanitic, from which we may infer that the Leḥjân in the second and first centuries before Christ had already made way for the Nabataeans and