406 AXUM. 
which took place upwards of three hundred years after Christy 
but I should rather be inclined to believe that the workmen of 
that age were scarcely equal to complete so chaste and highly 
finished an undertaking. There cannot, however, I conceive, 
exist a doubt but that they were erected by Grecian workmen 
from Egypt, as it is known to have been the universal practice of 
the Emperors of Abyssinia to employ foreign artificers from that 
country, a circumstance proved by the excavations before de- 
scribed in Lasta and other parts of Abyssinia. 
From the obelisk we proceeded to the church, and again ex- 
amined the short Ethiopic inscription which I had before copied, 
and I was still more strongly confirmed in my original opinion, 
that it contains the identical characters seen by Mr. Bruce, which 
he restored,'' or rather converted into Greek, as they are in- 
scribed on the footstool of a kind of throne or altar, where*' the 
feet would naturally rest,'' (which stone, however, is certainly of 
granite, and not of freestone,") whereas on the one where the 
King was usually crowned," standing about thirty yards dis- 
tant from the other, there could not be found the slightest trace 
of a single letter. Mr. Bruce mentions, in corroboration of his 
inscription that Mr.Poncet had seen it, and that he had mistaken 
the last word BASIAEXIS" for Basilius,* but, after carefully 
looking over the original edition of Mr. Poncet's work in French, 
as well as in the English translation, I found that there was not 
the slightest mention of any such characters or inscription through- 
out his Journal. The larger Greek inscription which I discovered 
had, indeed, been frequently noticed by those Jesuits who travelled 
* Vide Vol. IV. p. 323. 
