AXUM. 417 
markable, that the name of this animal, used throughout Abys- 
sinia at the present day/ is precisely similar to that given by 
Cosmas. In the Geez character it is written l^^t]', 
Arwe h^risj* and it is pronounced with a strong aspirate on the 
ha/* and a slight one, peculiar to the language, after the final 
syllable, as I have remarked in a copy of Ludolfs History, which 
I took with me into Abyssinia ; arwe still signifying fera" or 
bestia in genere,'' a coincidence so uncommon, that it appears 
to me very satisfactorily to prove, that the language spoken at the 
court of Axum in the time of Cosmas was Geez. 
The remarks made by Cosmas on this subject, and the deduc- 
tions they lead to, are likewise of considerable importance^ from 
their tending to give a more correct notion of the pronunciation 
of those particular Greek letters employed in spelling these 
words than we before possessed, as the Abyssinian language, 
from its peculiar formation, (every sound being exactly expressed 
in the writing,) is not liable to the same corruption which has 
attended the Greek. It will be seen by a reference to Mont- 
fancon's Nova Collectio Patrum,'' whence I have extracted the 
passage, that the Latin translator mistook the ''9?" for a word 
expressing \' aut,'' and therefore supposed apy and ap;cr; to be two 
different names applied to the same animal, a mistake that almost 
any commentator might have fallen into, who had not been 
previously aware of its connection with the Geez language. 
It is also singular that Ludolf, to whom this animal was men- 
tioned by Gregory, should not have discovered that it was the 
* In Amharic it is 0^ Qtl —aweer haris. Vide Ludolf, ]. i. c. 10, 78- 
