A X U M. 
195 
never have been meant to form a part of the chair ; and they 
were apparently the workmanship of diflPerent periods ; the pillars, 
constituting a part of the chair, being evidently of the lower Roman 
empire. These reasons, added to what has been before mentioned, 
of their being composed of different materials, are quite sufficient, I 
think, to prove beyond all doubt, that they were two distinct in- 
scriptions. I shall therefore call the one on the basanite the first, 
and the other on the chair, the second Adulite inscription. 
" I consider the first to be a record inscription of the victories 
of Ptolemy in Asia, confirming accounts alluded to by several 
authors ; but, being in the third person, I conceive it may have 
been brought to Adulis, in conformity with the King's orders, by 
some of the trading vessels, without Ptolemy having ever visited 
the coast himself; or it may have been engraved and brought there 
at a subsequent period. As to the second inscription, I consider it 
to have been erected by an Abyssinian king, to commemorate the 
victories of a long reign ; and my principal reasons for this are as 
follow : 
" First, its extraordinary conformity with the inscription which 
I found at Axum ; both are in the first person ; both speak in the 
same lofty tone of trifling exploits, and make use of the same pecu- 
liar words in expressing the King's gratitude bux^^^i^oci ; a word not 
common before the time of the Christian era, and in both the same 
words are also made use of, as uttotoc^oc, sTroXe/^ijo-a, edvv}^ kc, in contra- 
distinction to the basanite inscription, in which, as before observed, 
other words are generally employed. Secondly, the names used are 
Abyssinian, and some of them identically the same ; and they are 
so little altered in turning them into Greek, as to be easily traced ; 
VOL. III. c c 
