Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/72

 ; and their stronghold, Oppidum Sacae, probably the same settlement as Axum. Bion speaks of Asachae five days from the sea, and Ptolemy locates a "city of the Sacae" in the Tigre highlands, but has no knowledge of Axum. Pliny (VI, 34) also speaks of the Ascitae who brought myrrh and frankincense to South Arabia on their rafts supported on inflated skins, and suggests a derivation of the name from askos, bladder; but both names reproduce rather the mountainous coast of South Arabia, east of Hadramaut, called Hasik (Asich in §33 of the Periplus), and there is evidently an ethnic and geographic connection between Hasik, the Asachae or Ascitae, and Axum.

Axum, the ancient capital and sacred city of the kingdom we call Abyssinia, is still the place of coronation for its kings. Abyssinia is the Latinized form of Habash, while its people call themselves Itiopyavan, Hellenized into Aethiopians. Habash is translated by modern Arabs as "mixture," while Herodotus explained Aethiopia as "land of the sunburned faces;" each explanation being, probably, incorrect. The Habashat appear likewise along the eastern terraces of South Arabia (Mahra) where they were the dominant race for several centuries before the Christian era. Pausanias (de Situ Graeciae, VI, 26–9), speaks of a "deep bay of the Erythraean Sea, having islands, Abasa and Sacaea" (probably Kuria Muria, Masira, and Socotra); the Roman writers mention an Abissa Polis in this region, and Stephanus of Byzantium says, "beyond the Sabaeans are the Chatramotitiae (Hadramaut) and the Abaseni." From the Egyptian inscriptions we learn that one of the Punt-people visited in their trading voyages was called Hbsti, and dwelt, apparently, not only in Mahra, but also in Socotra and Eastern Somaliland.

Glaser derives the name Habash from a Mahri word, meaning "gatherers." Synonymous with this is Aethiopian or Itiopyavan, which he derives from atyôb, "incense;" and it is significant that even in the time of the Periplus their ancient home in Mahra was still the "Frankincense Country." As "gatherers of incense," then, we have the mission of the Asachae or Axumites. This people, like their predecessors from the same region, the Cushites who traded with Babylon and Thebes, a branch of whom, "intermarrying with the natives" (Periplus, §16), helped found the Nubian Kingdom, and like the Punt or Poen-people of the Theban inscriptions, left their settlements in Mahra, Socotra and Somaliland (the true frankincense country) and migrated westward, settling finally in the Tigre highlands, where for the first time they established an enduring power. But their migration was different from the others, in that it was due to warfare and oppression rather than trade.