422 
plikt's natural histoet. 
[Book y. 
CHAP. 12. (11.) — THE COASTS OE ARABIA, SITUATE OK" 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 
Scenitse^ ; it is remarkable for its sterility, except in the parts 
where it joins up to Syria, and it has iId thing 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 Red Sea, where it borders upon 
^ Arabia Petrsea; that part of Arabia which immediately joins up to 
EgyP^- ^ Called Arabia Felix 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 Red Sea, 
i.e. on the east of the Straits of Bab-el- Mandeb. Porster (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 Grreek (jKrjvrj, " 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 hiUs on the borders of Egypt and Arabia Petraea, im- 
mediately south of the Sirbonian Lake and the Mediterranean Sea. On its 
western side was the tomb of Pompey the Great. 
^ The same as the Amalekites of Scripture, according to Hardouin. 
Bochart thinks that they are the same as the Chavilsei, w^io 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 modern district of the Hedjaz. Eorster 
identifies them with the Cauraitse, or Cadraitse of Arrian, and the Darrse 
of Ptolemy, tracing their origin to the Cedar or Kedar, the son of Ishmael, 
mentioned in Grenesis xxv. 13, and represented by the modern Harb nation 
and the modern 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 then' original abodes in the north-western part of the 
Arabian peninsula, east and south-east of the Moabites and Edomites. 
Extending their territory, we find the Nabatsei of Greek and Roman 
history occupying nearly the whole of Arabia Petraea, along the north- 
east coast of the Red Sea, on both sides of the -^lanitic Gulf, and on the 
