96 
W. F. Prideaux —On the Coins of Charibael. 
[No. 2, 
was at Saphar; secondly, that he was the sovereign of the contiguous 
tribes of the Homerites and the Sabaeans ; and thirdly, that, by means of 
embassies and presents, he established terms of friendship with the Boman 
Emperors. Saphar is universally acknowledged to be the town of Z/^afar, 
otherwise known as Haql-Yahsib, # a name which it probably owes to 
another ancient king of the Homerites, El sharah Yahsib, who is mention¬ 
ed in one of the inscriptions preserved in the British Museum (No. 33). 
Al-Hamdani, the historiographer of Yemen, calls Baidan, f&k-* 
the castle of the kingdom at Z/zafar, the seat of government and the resi¬ 
dence of the kings The original seat of the Sabsean monarchy was at 
Marib, but after the expedition of iElius Gallus and the consequent ruin of 
that city, it seems probable that the inferior tribe of Himyar, which is 
always represented in Arabian legends as an offshoot of Saba, rose to power 
and fixed its capital at the town of ZAafar. It is evident from the texfcof 
the JPeriplus that at the time of the compilation of that work the Home¬ 
rites were the ascendant tribe, and it seems reasonable to conclude that 
Kariba-el was their chief. The original designation of himself and his 
father was Mahrab of Saba, an inferior title to that of Malih , which he 
afterwards bore, and one which apparently corresponds to the Greek 
Tvpavvos, under which title we find Cholaibus, the subordinate chief of 
the district of Mophareites, mentioned in the twenty-second chapter of the 
JPeriplus. After he had brought the united kingdoms under his sole 
authority, he assumed the exalted epithet of Yehcm’am , struck coins, as we 
shall presently see, at his castle of Baidan and consolidated his power by 
an alliance with the Csesar of Borne. 
The name of Kariba-el belongs to the regular system of Himyaritic 
nomenclature, and its probable signification is JEl has strengthened. The 
root Icarab occurs in other Himyaritic names, such as Tobba’-karib, Ma’adi- 
karib, and is also found in the title Mahrab , a designation which would 
seem to have a nearer analogy to the ddodesta of the mediaeval Italian 
cities than to the tyrannies of the Greeks. The root is also found in the 
Hebrew Kerubim , those mythical creatures which are represented in the 
Assyrian sculptures as colossal winged bulls with human headsf and whose 
strength is asserted in the Bible to be sufficient to support the Deity Him¬ 
self (2 Sam. xxii, 11 ; Ps. xviii, 10). The surname JVattdr is not uncom¬ 
mon in the lists of the Sabsean kings and is referable to a root which 
appears primarily to convey the idea of uniqueness and thence of excellence. 
It is cognate with the Biblical name of Yether or Yethro (Jethro). The 
further epithet of Yehan’am which was subsequently assumed by Kariba-el 
is derived from the causative or Hiphil form of the root and may 
* D. II. Muller, Die Burgen rind Schlosser Siidaraliens , Wien, 1879, p. 37. 
f Lenormant, Les Origines de V Histoire, 1880, pp. 112, sqq. 
