422 PLINY's IfATUEAL HISTOET. [Book V. 



CHAP. 12. (11.) — THE COASTS OF ARABIA, SITUATE ON THE 

 EGYPTIAN SEA. 



Beyond the Pelusiac Mouth is Arabia^ which extends to 

 the Red Sea, and joins the Arabia known by the surname of 

 Happy ^, so famous for its perfumes and its wealth. This' 

 is called Arabia of the Catabanes^, the Esbonitae^, and the 

 ScenitsB® ; it is remarkable for its sterility, except in the parts 

 where it joins up to Syria, and it has nothing remarkable 

 in it except Mount Casius^. The Arabian nations of the 

 Canchlaei^ join these on the east, and, on the south the 

 Cedrei^, both of which peoples are adjoining to the Naba- 

 taei^". The two gulfs of the Eed Sea, where it borders upon 



1 Arabia Petrcea j that part of Arabia which immediately joins up to 

 Egypt. 2 Ctilled Arabia Fehx to the present day. 



3 The part of Arabia which joins up to Egypt, Arabia Petrsea namely. 



* Strabo places this people as far south as the mouth of the Eed Sea, 

 i.e. on the east of the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. Forster (in his ' Arabia,' 

 vol. ii.) takes this name to be merely an inversion of Beni Kahtan, the 

 great tribe which mainly peoples, at the present day, central and south- 

 ern Arabia. 



^ Probably the people of Esebon, the Heshbon of Scripture, spoken of 

 by Jerome as being the city of Sihon, king of the Amorites. 



^ The " tent-people," from the G-reek (TKijvrj, " a tent." This seems to 

 have been a name common to the nomadic tribes of Arabia. Ammianus 

 Marcellinus speaks of them as being the same as the Saraceni or Saracens. 



7 The modern El Katieh or El Kas ; which is the summit of a lofty 

 range of sandstone hills on the borders of Egypt and i\j*abia Petrsea, im- 

 mediately south of the Sirbonian Lake and the Mediterranean Sea. On its 

 western side was the tomb of Pompey the Great. 



8 The same as the Amalekites of Scripture, according to Hardouin. 

 Bochart thinks that they are the same as the Chavilffii, who are men- 

 tioned as dwelling in the vicinity of Babylon. 



^ The position which Pliny assigns to this nation would correspond 

 with the northern part of the modem district of the Hedjaz. Forster 

 identifies them with the Cauraitse, or Cadraitse of Arrian, and the Darrae 

 of Ptolemy, tracmg their origin to the Cedar or Kedar, the son of Ishmael, 

 mentioned in Genesis xxv. 13, and represented by the modem Harb nation 

 and the modem town of Kedeyre. See Psalm cxx. 5 : " Woe is me, that 

 I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar !" 



^ An Arabian people, said to have descended from the eldest son of 

 Ishmael, who had their original abodes in the north-western part of the 

 Arabian peniasula, east and south-east of the Moabites and Edomites. 

 Extending their territory, we find the Nabatsei of Greek and Eoman 

 history occupying nearly the whole of Arabia Petraea, along the north- 

 east coast of the Red Sea^ on both sides of the ^lauitic Gul^ and on the 



