194 
AXUM. 
should have been unacquainted with events of such great import- 
ance, and about which he was collecting information for the in- 
struction of a prince descended from Ptolemy himself. 
" To these objections may be added, that, in summing up the 
victories at the end of the second part, there is not the slightest 
allusion to those mentioned in the first ; for on the basanite are re- 
cited conquests in Syria, Bactria, Persia, kc. ; whereas on the chair, 
the extent of the conquests is carried no farther eastward than the 
coast of the Red Sea. 
" Though some of these objections have been before started, they 
have none of them hitherto been satisfactorily answered ; and 
against the inscription, as a whole, they appear to me absolutely 
unanswerable. There is a wav, however, in which these difficulties 
may all be solved ; and that is, by considering the two parts as dis- 
tinct inscriptions ; for all these obscurities attached to them, it must 
be observed, proceed solely from their having been taken as one 
inscription ; for which, too, there is no other authority than the 
single circumstance of their having been found near to each other ; 
for, as to the supposition of Cosmas, it is easily accounted for, from 
the great difficulty he must have had in fixing upon any person to 
whom to attribute the second part ; besides, that Cosmas (as must 
appear to any one who looks into his work), was a weak, simple, 
and credulous man, whose assertion, even if he had said so, would 
have had no weight whatsoever. Farther, it is to be particularly 
noted, that the tablet, on which is found the first inscription, is not 
only unconnected in every way with the chair, but the chair is never 
once mentioned on the tablet, nor the tablet referred to on the 
chair. The shape, too, of the tablet is so different, that it could 
