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The Arabian Aromatics Trade in AntiquityAuthor(s): A.F.L. BeestonSource: Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, , A.F.L. Beeston at the ArabianSeminar and other papers (2005), pp. 53-64Published by: ArchaeopressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41223845 .

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The Arabian Aromatics Trade in Antiquity

Summary The Hadramite realm is the sole Arabian source of frankincense. Export from there to the Mediterra- nean up the west coast of the Peninsula, and to Mesopotamia across the Peninsula from Nagrãn to north-east Arabia, was, during the fourth to second century ВС, a monopoly of the Minaeans; there is no indication that either Qataba- nians or Sabaeans took part in the trade. Tn the first century ВС and the first AD the Minaean mercantile group as such had broken up, but at least one of its components, the °hl Gb°n, continued to handle the South Arabian end of the route as far as cAsîr; north of there, the west coast route was managed by Nabataeans from AilaAAqabah, and the trans-Peninsular route by Gerrhaeans. Thereafter, this trade diminished, partly because of competition of sea-borne trade, partly by contraction in the global demand. Concerning the aromatics trade in the first half of the first millennium ВС we have too little reliable evidence for reaching a plausible conclusion.

The general term "aromatics" covers a wide variety of sweet-smelling substances, but in an Arabian context two stand out as pre-eminent, frankincense from the Boswellia sacra tree, and myrrh from varieties of Commiphorae. The reason for this is that the habitat of the frankincense tree is exclusively South Arabia and the Horn of Africa; and the same is true of the most highly prized variety of myrrh, though inferior varieties grow elsewhere. It is regrettable that Van Beek's map purporting to show the distribution areas of these two plants (1958: 152) has been extensively reproduced in other works, for in one respect it is gravely inaccurate: it shows the habitat of B. sacra as confined to the Qarä3 mountains in the hinterland of the Dhofar province of the modern Sultanate of Oman (see Fig. 1); in fact the tree grows freely in the high plateaux and wadis, but not on the coastal plains, from about longitude 47° E (roughly that of Shabwah) to 55° E (at the end of the Qarä3 range). Thus the classical "incense-land" (AißavcoTOCpopoc, Strabo XVI.4.25, PME 31) was essentially the pre-Islamic realm of Haçiramawt, and only incidentally included the eastward extension into Dhofar. Myrrh appears to be capable of growing over a largish area west of Shabwah, but again not in the coastal plains.

For both products there was a large demand in the Mediterranean-Mesopotamian world of antiquity (Figs. 2 and 3); for the supplying of this there was an overland route which started from the Hadramite capital Shabwah and ran westwards (the way northwards being barred by the sands of the great "Empty Quarter") to the Wadï Jawf (perhaps picking up myrrh en route), thence north via Nagrän and Dedän/al- cUlä to Gaza; at Nagrän another route branched off north-eastward by Qaryat al-Fäw and the oasis of Yabrîn to Gerrha/Thäj in north-east Arabia for the Mesopotamian market.

The most flourishing and best-evidenced periods of this trade fall into two phases, one through the fourth to second century ВС, the other in the first century ВС and the first AD. For the former phase there is a wealth of evidence, epigraphic and otherwise, showing that the trade was conducted by a group under the leadership of the king of the Minaeans, but comprising a variety of "folks" - °hl} Conspicuous among these, and most often mentioned, were an °hl Gb°n. According to the third-century ВС Eratosthenes, the metropolis, or capital, of the Minaeans was Qarnaw/Khirbat Macïn, at the east end of the Wadï Jawf; but the nearby Yathill/Baräqish rivalled it, at least in material magnificence. However, there were communi- ties of Minaean traders, each under the supervision of a magistrate called kabïr, established in Dedän in north-west Arabia, in the Qatabanian metropolis Timnac, and in the Hadramite metropolis Shabwah. Fur- ther evidences of Minaean activity are found even more widely-spread - in Egypt and on the island of Delos. Most notable among these evidences is the inscription on the coffin of a Minaean, who died in the twenty-second year of Ptolemy son of Ptolemy (probably Ptolemy III Euergetes, and therefore 224 ВС), who had "imported myrrh and calamus for the temples of the gods of Egypt". His coffin was deposited in the Serapeum at Memphis, but we do not know where the deceased actually resided - all we are told is that the coffin was conveyed to Memphis from elsewhere, probably by barge if the merchant had resided

53



54 A.F.L. Beeston

FIGURE I Ancient South Arabia. The shading represents highland areas. (Drawn by Carl Phillips).

FIGURE 2 Cities, towns and settlements connected with the Arabian aromatics trade in antiquity. (Drawn by Carl Phillips).



The Arabian Aromatics Trade in Antiquity 55

FIGURE 3 Countries, kingdoms and regions connected with the Arabian aromatics trade in antiquity. (Drawn by Carl Phillips).

down river at, say, Alexandria, or up-river at, say, Koptos, the Nile terminal of the trade route across the Sharqiyyah desert from the Red Sea (Fig. 2), a route which has yielded some Minaic graffiti. Inscriptions from Qarnaw and Yathill further record trading journey s made to Assyria {°°s2r) and (cbr nhrri) (Fig. 3). One more detail has recently been provided by S.M. Burstein (1989: 149, n. 1), namely a mention of "Minaean and Gerrhaean weights" in a papyrus (P.Cairo Zeno 59536, lines 1 1-12).

From the end of the second century ВС, epigraphic sources are silent about any Minaean kingdom, though there are one or two references to individual Minaeans in Sabaic texts: we must conclude that the mercantile group as such had collapsed. For the first century AD our principal authorities are Strabo and Pliny; but Strabo incorporates much material from earlier Greek authorities belonging to the third/second century ВС.

Pliny provides an explicit answer for what happened to the frankincense trade in the first century AD: all frankincense from the "incense-land", Haçiramawt, was collected at Shabwah and taxed there; from Shabwah it was not permitted to be exported except by Gebbanites, nisi per Gebbanitas (N.H. XII. 63).

2 It is regrettably typical of the way some scholars have misused the evidence, that this text has often been presented as "through the country of the Gebbanitai"3 - although the text has no word about a "country". This inaccuracy, combined with the fact that Pliny also says that the Gebbanites had Thomna as their ca-



56 A.F.L. Beeston

put (N.H. ХП.64), has led to widespread identification of the Gebbanites with the Kittibanoi4 = Qatabani- ans, despite the fact that long ago Tkac (1912) had made the vastly more probable identification with the epigraphic °hl Gb°n. Pliny's data are not difficult to interpret: the Minaean kingdom had disappeared, but the most significant element in it, the Gebbanites, retained for some time the monopoly of the incense traf- fic leaving Shabwah; their headquarters, caput, at Thomna would thus be the successor to the Minaean community in Timnac of earlier centuries. It should be noted that, while the Minaean metropolis of Qar- naw disappears from history with the disappearance of the Minaean kingdom, Yathill - under Sabaean control - continued to be an important place for several centuries.

Philby's travels have revealed that the Sayhad sand desert is bisected by a sand-free gravel corridor running west-north-west from Shabwah direct to the Wadï Jawf past a small rock outcrop named Thaniy- yah; it has long seemed to me that this was a more likely route for incense caravans than the one running south-west towards Timnac, simply in principle: and Pliny's words, that the caravans left Shabwah "by a single narrow track", uno tramite angusto, (N.H.Xll.54)5 seem to fit the Thaniyyah corridor rather better than the south-westward route.

Nevertheless, the Gebbanites of the first century AD did not retain control of all the caravan routes through Arabia. Their settlement at Dedän ceases to provide any epigraphic evidence after the second century ВС; and Strabo has an important notice (XVI.4.4) apparently showing that "Gabaioi" - i.e. Pliny's Gebbanitae, and not to be emended, as most editors have done, to Gerrhaioi, which makes no sense at all in this context - operated only the South Arabian part of the total route, as far approximately as the neighbourhood of Abhä in cAsIr, a forty-days' journey, while the more northerly part of the route, a journey of seventy days, was operated by merchants from AilaAAqabah, who must have been Nabataeans (Fig.2).6

Pliny gives a list of inland Arabian towns, ending "and Thomala where they deliver the aromatic wares", et quo mercês odorum deferent Thomala {N.H. VI. 154). Von Wissmann and Höfner - writing in or before 1951 (1953: 12) - identified this place with Tabälah (Fig. 2), an oasis famous in early Arabic poetry, and situated on the western branch of the middle Wadï Bïshah (Thilo 1958: 100), on latitude approximately 20° N; they could not have known that in the very same year, 1951, the American expedition to Märib unearthed a Sabaic text, published in 1962 as Ja 635, which refers to a locality d-Tml "on the borders of the land of DlDsJď' namely the tribe later known as al-Azd (Azd al-Sarãt); this appears to be at Bi3r Thumäl, further south than Tabälah and closer to Abhä. It seems to me likely that this was indeed where the Gb°n handed over their aromatics to Nabataeans from Aila.

There can be little doubt that after the first century AD the overland spice route suffered a diminution of trade (see above). However, a central hypothesis in M.CA. Bafaqïh's study of the first to third centuries AD (Bafaqïh 1990) is that the recurrent wars between Saba3 and Himyar throughout that period were due to an ambition on each side to monopolize control of the trade routes both maritime and overland, by sub- jugating its rival. Attractive though this may seem, I feel it would be difficult to find a parallel elsewhere in world history for a policy so consistently and relentlessly pursued by two states for a stretch of three centuries.

At all events, there is no explicit reference in the sources to a trade factor affecting state policies until we reach the sixth century. We are told that the fons et origo of the conflict between Aksum and Himyar lay in the fact that the Himyarite king had massacred some Byzantine merchants in Mocha, with the result that others were afraid to come, thereby gravely damaging the interests of Aksum. These Byzantine merchants must surely have arrived in South Arabia overland; it is hardly credible that goods should have been shipped down the Red Sea to Mocha, only in order to be ferried across into Africa, instead of being landed directly at Adulis (Fig. 2). But any such trade, whether seaborne or overland, was probably in general merchandise, not specifically aromatics, in view of the probable decline, mentioned above, in Medi- terranean demand for aromatics.




The apogee of the aromatics trade appears to have been in the first century AD, when Pliny expatiates on the enormous consumption in the Mediterranean world (e.g. N.H. VI. 162). This factor could possibly account for the establishment of the Hadramite settlement at Samhar/Moscha/Khor Rori on the Dhofar coast just about that time:7 namely, the more westerly incense-producing area could no longer by itself supply the market, and remoter sources of supply had to be exploited. From Khor Rori the frankincense would have been shipped coastwise to Kane [QäniD]/BiDr cAlï, and thence by camel to Shabwah (Figs 1 and 2). It is to this that Groom is of course referring when he speaks of incense being landed at Kane (1981: 147); Crone has done him a grave injustice in declaring that he "unthinkingly assumes" that the shippers were Sabaeans (Crone 1987: 22, n. 41), a thing which Groom certainly does not say.

The Hadramis were primary producers of frankincense, and there is no indication that they ever engaged in international trade; that task they conceded as a monopoly to the Minaeans - as long as the Minaean league existed - and later to the Gebbanites. Nor do the Qatabanians appear to have engaged in long-distance trade, whether in aromatics or in other commodities. The Timnac market stela (CSAI 1 205 = RES 4337), of perhaps с 300 ВС, contains clauses (CSAI 1 205A/24, B/21) regulating the use of the market by "foreign" (nkr), non-Qatabanian traders, who presumably include the "Minaeans in Timnac" mentioned above. However, the text makes no mention of specific commodities, aromatics or otherwise - unless the enigmatic bzfwjrf (CSAI I 205B/3) could possibly refer to "seed" (Arabic bizr) or "grain" - and if, as I propose above, the incense caravans made use of the Thaniyyah corridor, they would have by- passed Qataban altogether.

Turning to the Sabaeans, one basic fact is crucial: it is climatically impossible that frankincense can ever have grown in the Sabaean realm. Anything in the Greek and Latin sources which appears to say the Sabaeans produced incense must be an error. The explanation was suggested a good many years ago by J. Ryckmans, namely that it would be virtually impossible for a Greek speaker to make a clear distinction between *SabaDi ("Sabaean") Zaßaioc and *Šabawi ("man of Shabwah") *£<xßm)oc, and even if the origi- nal writer understood the distinction, copyists were bound to confuse the two.8

A fascinating example of proliferation of the error is found in a passage of Agatharchides, beginning at paragraph 99c in Burstein's edition (Burstein 1989: 159) with a reference to "the very fertile country of the Sabaeans, a very large tribe, in whose territory are found myrrh, frankincense and cinnamon. On the coast there is also found balsam and a certain other very fragrant herb, the odour of which, however, quickly fades". The "very large tribe" must be a conflation of Sabaeans and Hadramites, since the Sabaeans could not produce frankincense, and had no sea-coast. The mention of cinnamon is a total error, but one com- mon throughout classical literature; it comes from India and the Far East, and does not grow either in Ara- bia or in East Africa. In paragraph 101a, we have "the fragrance of the incense is strongest in the country of the Sabaeans", where for Sabaeans we must understand Shabwans: the contrast implied in "strongest" is possibly with the Somalian product. In paragraph 102 we find [a] (apud Photius) "The city [metropolis] of the Sabaeans bears the name of the whole nation"; [b] (apud Diodorus) "The capital [metropolis] of this tribe, which is called Sabai...."; [c] (apud Strabo) "The city of the Sabaeans, Mariaba, is located on a densely wooded mountain"; only version [c] is correct; and it may be remarked that the objection made by some scholars to the "densely wooded mountain" is unfounded, since the fertile Märib oasis certainly qualifies as "well-wooded", and in Greek, "mountain" has a more extended application than the English word, describing any high ground (Märib is 1000 m above sea level). Version [b] certainly seems from the context to have "Sabaeans" as the nation referred to; but if so, the writer has confounded them with the "people of Shabwah". Version [a] manifestly derives from version [b] but makes explicit the error implicit in [b].

So far as concerns aromatics other than frankincense, a Sabaic inscription (CIH 308, c. second century AD) has hitherto been interpreted as meaning that the Sabaeans did grow some sort of aromatics. The text speaks of tnf (planting?) of "fyb and srf, with all their mhwkb (conduits?) and irrigation works (mtfqy)"



58 A.F.L. Beeston

(CIH 308/4-5). The fact that Arabic fyb has "perfume" among its meanings has led to the supposition that we have here a reference to aromatics, and in consequence srf (otherwise attested in Sabaic in the sense "silver") has been understood as "pale-coloured resin".9 But the word "irrigation works" is crucial: aromatic plants do not need artificial irrigation, but palms do, and Sabaic texts are full of references to palm groves (nhl). I would therefore propose that srf should be related to Arabic sarafãn(ah), a type of tough date (Lane 1682b-c), which is said proverbially to be ribciyyah tusramu bi-°l-sayf wa-tu°kalu Ы-Ч- šatiyyah "grown in spring, harvested in summer and eaten in winter" (Lane 1018a s. v. rbc, and 1682c). Beside this, tyb would be some other type of date (palm). It is perhaps just possible that myrrh could have grown somewhere in the Sabaean realm, but there is no epigraphic evidence for it.

Did the Sabaeans nevertheless perhaps engage in the incense trade as middlemen, even though they were certainly not producers? Crone asserts that they did, by conveying the East African product across the straits (1987: 22-23). The evidence she cites is firstly Agatharchides paragraph 103 (Burstein 1989: 166-167), where, after the passage quoted above concerning "Sabaeans", the writer speaks of them as di- vided into warriors, farmers and seafarers "using large rafts", and later says that "not a few of the Sabaeans also employ boats made of skins". But in all this, the "Sabaeans" must be accounted an error; the descrip- tions can only apply to Hadramites. At no period did the Sabaeans as such (apart from the episodes of Sa- baeo-Himyarite dual monarchy, which did not occur until the first century AD and after) have access to the Gulf of Aden; and their presence on the Tihãmah coast of the Red Sea was minimal in the extreme, amounting to no more than a small establishment in the Zabïd region;10 neither the port of Mocha nor the harbourage at Okëlis is evidenced as in any way "Sabaean". On the other hand, Kane is described epi- graphically as the "royal shipyard" of the Hadramite kings,11 and throughout history it is Hadramites, more than any other South Arabian people, who have been noted as seafarers. The rafts and boats in this passage were undoubtedly for transport from the Dhofar coast to Kane.

Secondly, according to Crone, "Artemidorus knew the Sabaeans to be trading in aromatics of both the local kind and that from Ethiopia" (1987: 22), for which she gives a reference apud Strabo XVI.4.19. This paragraph, attributed by Strabo to Artemidorus, figures in Burstein's edition of Agatharchides as paragraph 103b (1989: 166-167), and includes the remark "Larimnum, a most fragrant incense, is also found in the land of the Sabaeans". This last, together with the observations made above on paragraphs 99-102, is enough to make it certain that "Sabaeans" is an error for Hadramites.

Thirdly, PME 7-12 does not appear to me to justify Crone's claim that "By the first century AD, Afri- can frankincense was at least as important as the Arabian variety, while African myrrh had already ac- quired priority" (1987: 22). What the PME actually lists as the exports from East African ports, is (Fig. 2): from Avalitê: "aromatics, ... a minimal [sic] amount of myrrh" (PME 7); from Malaô: "myrrh [and] a little 'far-side' [i.e. African] incense" (PME 8); from Mundu, the same items as from Malaô plus "the incense called (хокротох) [a term found nowhere else than in PME]" (PME 9); from Mosyllon: "цокротог) incense, poorer than that from Mundu; 'far-side' frankincense ... and myrrh but only on rare occasions" (PME 10); from Akannai, "the one place that produces most 'far-side' incense, of fine quality" (PME 11). Nothing here warrants, so far as I can see, the conclusion that African products had become more important than the Arabian ones, nor of course that they were shipped across the straits by Sabaeans. The phrase in PME 7 stating that the transport was "sometimes conducted also by the Barbarians [this, for the PME writer, means people of Barbarikê = Somalia (Fig. 3)] on rafts" (лоте ка' xcov Bapßapaw гт axeSíaiç ôioupepóvxcov) leads me to suppose that the contrast implied in the word "also" is with South Arabian peoples in general, not with any one specific people, least of all Sabaeans.

Pliny (VI. 154) has a list of South Arabian peoples, some recognisable, others not: Thoani, Actaei, Cha- tramotitae, Tonabaei, Antiadalei et Lexianae, Agraei, Cerbani, Sabaei; and immediately continues Arabům propter tura clarissimi ad utraque maria porrectis gentibus. This presents some difficulties of punctuation. Clearly, "with peoples extending to both seas [the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden]" refers to




the whole list and not only to the Sabaeans; but I am inclined to think that "most famous for incense" also refers generally to South Arabia as a whole, rather than to Sabaeans. Pliny's account of the incense trade at Shabwah is too well known and much quoted to need repetition in detail. But a passage in ХИ.52-54 de- serves comment: Tura praeter Arabiam nullis, ac ne Arabiae quidem universae. In medio eiusfere sunt Atramotitae 'Astramitae' pagus Sabaeorum, capite regni Sabota in monte excelso, a quo octo mansioni- bus distai regio eorum turifera Sariba appellata.... [54] Attingunt et Minaei, pagus alius, per quos evehitur uno tramite angusto. The region called Sariba, eight (camel-) stations - approximately 320 km - from Shabwah, must be measured eastward, since west of Shabwah is not incense-producing; and this takes us to the Mahra country, which certainly is incense-producing, and much later (sixth century) was claimed as a fief by Hadramite chieftains; but the name Sariba remains obscure. The crux of the passage lies in the word pagus "province". By the first century AD it is very probable that the Qarnaw-Yathill area had become subject to Saba3; but what can possibly be meant by the statement that the Hadramites were a pagus of the Sabaeans?12 Confusion such as has been discussed above can hardly have been at work in this passage, where the writer clearly understands the individuality of the Hadramites and their capital Sabota. Yet so far as one can judge from the epigraphic and archaeological evidence, the first and second centuries AD were the peak of Hadramite cultural and political flowering, in a manner irreconcilable with Sabaean over- lordship. Perhaps this problem ought to be left until we have fuller evidence both from the Hadramite and from the Sabaean angle.

Reverting to epigraphic sources, it can hardly fail to strike one that in spite of the fact that our Sabaic corpus is something like ten times as ample as the Minaic one, it shows a total lack of references to long- distance trade. It gives us a picture of Sabaeans as warriors, and as engaged to an overwhelming extent in agriculture, arboriculture (especially palms), viticulture, and a certain amount of stock raising; such activi- ties naturally required small local markets for exchange of goods, and there are one or two texts referring to them such as RES 3910, concerned with sales of livestock. The evidence is admittedly negative, but even so shows a remarkable contrast with the much smaller Minaic corpus.

A few words need to be said about trade in North Arabia. Agatharchides paragraph 89 (Burstein 1989: 148-149) speaks of an island which must be Tírãn (Fig. 2), at the entrance to the Gulf of cAqabah, and the promontory (RaDs Qasabah) of which the island is a prolongation. In version [a] (apud Photius): "If one sights along a straight line drawn through it [neuter, i.e. the promontory] the line would extend to the so- called Rock [i.e. Petra] and Palestine to which [fern.] the Gerrhaeans, Minaeans and all the Arabs whose settlements are nearby, bring frankincense, as is the report, together with cargoes of incense from the upper country". In version [b] (apud Diodorus): "The promontory, which is situated in front of the island, lies below the area called the Rock [i.e. Petra] and Palestine. It is to this region that the Gerrhaeans and Minaeans bring, as is the report, frankincense and other aromatic products from what is called Upper Ara- bia". In version [c] (apud Strabo): "Near this island is a promontory which stretches towards the Rock [i.e. Petra], of the Arabs called Nabataeans, and the country of Palestine. To this region the Minaeans, Ger- rhaeans and all their neighbours bring cargoes of aromatic substances". Crone (1987: 23, and n. 46) is of course right in saying that the feminine relative pronoun in version [a] cannot refer to the promontory, but she must be wrong in concluding therefrom that it refers to the island. It would be totally senseless for merchants to ferry their cargoes onto the island of Tírãn, and then have to transport them off it again to some other point on the mainland. Grammatically, the relative naturally refers to the next proximate feminine antecedent, Petra and/or Palestine - the obvious destination for the goods conveyed both by Minaeans coming from Dedän, and Gerrhaeans coming across the Peninsula by way of the Wadï Sirhän. At the same time we ought not to suppose that all the peoples mentioned carried all the goods listed: the goods must be distributed between the peoples; Minaeans would have brought the frankincense, the Ger- rhaeans (and the "other Arabs") other types of aromatics, probably such items as Indian sandalwood arriv- ing at the head of the Gulf by sea. The Gerrhaeans no doubt handled frankincense destined for the Meso-



60 A.F.L. Beeston

potamian market, but they would not have been so foolish as to send it back across the Peninsula, after it had already crossed it once, to Palestine, to face the competition of Minaean incense which had travelled a very much shorter journey.

Finally, one may ask, was there an aromatics (and especially incense) trade overland through Arabia anterior to the appearance of the Minaeans, and if so, who handled it? If one accepts in its essentials the story of how the "Queen of Sheba" brought spices, etc. to Solomon, one might possibly be inclined to see in the story the record of a trading mission, and conclude that, at the beginning of the first millennium ВС, there was an incense trade run by Sabaeans. Here, however, Crone (1987: 14) writes:

This queen does not, however, prove that a trade in South Arabian spices already existed, because she is most plausibly seen as a north Arabian ruler. Tn the first place, the Sabaeans are a north Arabian people in the Assyrian records... and the traditional explanation that these Sabaeans were a trading colony from the south is implausible in view of the fact that they appear as a warlike people in the Assyrian records and as raiders who carry off Job's cattle in the Bible. Tn the second place, queens are well attested for north Arabian tribes ...whereas none is attested for south Arabia at any time.

There are several points here which must be challenged. The final statement is incorrect. A Sabaic inscription, Er 13, published in 1973, speaks of a queen of Haçiramawt named Mlkhlk (daughter/sister?) of the king of SabaD, who was evidently a personage of con- siderable importance. True, she was only a queen-consort, but if we want to see Bilqïs in the role of head of a trading mission, there is no reason why she too may not have been a consort rather than regnant.

The confident assertion that the Sabaeans of the Assyrian records were a North Arabian people rests solely on the fact that those records, on one occasion just before 700 ВС and on another just after, speak of "tribute" sent by two kings (with manifestly Sabaean royal names); and it has been argued that since As- syrian military power never reached so far as South Arabia, these rulers must have been in the north-west of Arabia (Edom). This argument has never convinced me. Even if it were the case (which is slightly du- bious) that the word which has conventionally been translated as "tribute" carried the full connotation that it has in European languages of a gift made by a subject people to their superior ruler, its use need be no more in this case than a piece of imperialistic boasting (similar to the manner in which the Chinese impe- rial annals regularly record missions from foreign folks wholly outside the real power of China as "tribute- bearers"). I can see no reason to suppose that these two Sabaean rulers were other than South Arabians.

The Book of Job is held by many Biblical scholars to be a theological treatise, put into a narrative framework based on an ancient legend which was probably frankly fictitious from the start (Egyptian literature was quite familiar with fictitious narratives like the Tale of the Two Brothers). The geographical setting in an unidentifiable and semi-mythical "land of Uz" is consciously intended to take the narrative out of the sphere of the everyday familiar; and so far from suggesting a location in Israel's next-door neighbour Edom, it is intended to suggest somewhere very remote. In such a setting, the identification of the raiders as the warlike and extremely remote South Arabian Sabaeans fits well into place. In short, I can have no belief in these "north-west Arabian" Sabaeans.

One point made in Crone's exposition quoted above, is the warlike propensities of the Sabaeans, whether in the north or south. It is difficult to see what relevance this has for discrediting the Queen of Sheba story. In the first few centuries AD, the Sabaeans were quite as warlike as they had ever been; yet this did not prevent them from sending a peaceful diplomatic mission to Ctesiphon (see Müller 1974: 155ff). Moreover, such missions may have had trade among their concerns, without implying the consequence that those who despatched them were themselves traders: the objective could have been the pacifi- cation and protection of trade routes for the benefit of both traders and their customers; the unknown au- thor of the Monumentům Adulitanum explicitly says that his Arabian campaign was for this purpose (see Beeston 1980).



The Arabian Aromatics Trade in Antiquity 6 1

At the same time, to admit that the Queen of Sheba story may be based on an actual South Arabian mission to Solomon, even if this had some connection with trade interests, does not prove that the trade at this early date was necessarily in the famous aromatics to any significant extent. It could reasonably be argued that the Egyptian market, down to about the sixth century ВС, was adequately supplied by East African products, and that it was the emergence of Greece from her "dark ages" at that time - accompa- nied by a very large expansion in Greek trade - that resulted in the need for tapping the Arabian sources of supply. In that case, it could well be that the Arabian aromatics trade began then, handled initially by a multitude of middlemen, and then monopolized at the end of the fifth century by the Minaeans. Yet all this remains speculation: concrete evidence for any sort of trade in the first half of the first millennium ВС is lacking.

Appendix

There is a curious illustration of how the alleged "north-west Arabian" Sabaeans have bedevilled scholarly thinking, in a recent article by Pirenne (1989: 257ff). One major hypothesis of this article is that the South Arabian Sabaeans emigrated thither from Ethiopia, contrary to the more commonly accepted hypothesis that the Sabaean or quasi-Sabaean features encountered in ancient Ethiopia were the result of emigration from South Arabia. But since she accepts the genuine existence of "north-west Arabian" Sabaeans, she is obliged to postulate a "second stream" of emigration of Sabaeans from north-west to south-west Arabia (posterior to the early seventh century ВС!), without offering any explanation of how Sabaeans came to be in north-west Arabia at all. So far as I am concerned, I do not believe there is sufficient evidence to make possible any conclusion about whether the Yemenite Sabaeans came from Ethiopia or vice versa}3

Notes

This term is not encountered in other nations of the Sayhadic culture, except occasionally as denoting a religious confraternity. The component parts of other Sayhadic states were normally °s2cb (sg. s2cb). See the paper "Pliny's Gebbanitae" (Beeston 1972) republished on pp. 159-162 of this volume. ГМСАМ1. This, for instance, is the translation given by H. Rackham in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Pliny (Rackham 1968: 47). [MCAM1. 4 This is the form in Beeston's typescript, but I cannot trace its Greek origin. It may reflect Kvcißccivccis in Theophrastus IX.4.2. Strabo (XVI.4.2) has Karraßavetc, which presumably goes back to Eratosthe- nes. [MC AM]. 5 Contra Rackham, Pliny's attingunt et Minaei, pagus alius, per quos evehitur [tus] uno tramite angusto surely means "and adjacent [to the incense-bearing area, to which he has just referred] are the Minaeans, another regional group [pagus], by whom [the incense] is brought out via one narrow track" (MCAM's translation, kindly confirmed by Professor Glen Bowersock). However, Pliny does not spec- ify where this track is situated. [MC AM]. 6 See Beeston 1979: 7-9 for a detailed discussion of this route. ГМСАМ1. This dating has now been shown to be incorrect, see Avanzini & Sedov 2005. [MC AM]. I regret that I have been unable to trace this reference. [MC AMI. Pliny (ХИ.60) says that the best frankincense is white, but this is irrelevant, since in no case can Sa- baeans have grown frankincense. Beeston is clearly referring to the site recorded by Keall (and first mentioned in Keall 1983: 55), which was subsequently referred to as the "Gas Station site" and more recently has become known as al-



62 A.F.L. Beeston

Kashawbac. In his 1983 publication, Keall mentions similarities between the pottery found at this site and that from a site north of the Royal Ontario Museum study-area, which, on the basis of associated "inscriptional material", was given a first-second century AD date by Selma al-Radi (Keall 1983: 55). The site with "inscriptional material" was undoubtedly al-Hãmid, from which a number of archaic Sa- baic inscriptions had earlier been published by Jamme (1981). Beeston would certainly have been aware of the latter, but - in the context of discussing the evidence in Agatharchides and the PME -

may have been swayed by al-Radi's late dating of the al-Hämid inscriptions into thinking that there were two distinct sites. In fairness, one should say that in a later publication al-Radi stated that the inscriptions from al-Hämid indicate а ВС rather than an AD date (al-Radi 1985: 53).

There is now no reason to attribute a first-second century AD date to the site near Zabïd since the pottery has been shown to parallel that of al-Hämid and a few more sites on the Tihämah, all of which date to the early part of the first millennium ВС (Phillips 2005), a date consistent with the dating of the Ancient South Arabian inscriptions from the sites of al-Hämid and the neighbouring site, Wäqir (see Beeston 2005).

Whilst the early date of these pre-Islamic sites in the Tihämah clearly excludes them from any con- sideration of a later involvement of the Sabaeans in a Red-Sea-orientated incense-trade, they nevertheless remain open to interpretation regarding the presence of Sabaeans in this region of South Arabia in the first part of the first millennium (see Beeston 1995). [CSP] 11 Er 13 §13 (al-Iryanï 1973) = Er 13/36-37 (Arbach 2001: 16): w-dhr cs>m s'ffri"} fb-h] {3J)[y]q" q{ri>} mkdh mlk hdrmwt "and he burnt a number of ships at the port of Qäni3, dockyard of the king of Haçiramawt....". See also Ry 533/9 which refers to the same campaign by the Sabaean king S2cr cwtr and mentions booty of "forty-seven small boats and ships" taken at QäniD. I am most grateful to Dr Serguei Frantsouzoff for these references and the translation. [MC AM]. 12 See note 5 above. It is surely possible that Pliny was using Sabaei as a blanket term for the entire population of Arabia Felix, and that in this context the term pagus - which he uses of peoples (Astramitae, Minaei, etc.), not areas - refers to regional divisions of the entire South Arabian population [which he calls "the Sabaei"] rather than to "provinces" in a political sense. [MC AM]. See Beeston's more detailed treatment of this subject in "Sabaean Origins", pages 65-70 in this volume. [MC AM].

Sigla

CIH Inscriptions in Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum. Pars IV. Inscriptiones Himyariticas et Sabaeas continens. Paris: Reipublicae Typographeo, 1889-1932.

CSAII Qatabanian inscriptions as numbered in Avanzini 2004. Er 13 Inscription in al-Iryani 1973. See now Arbach 2001. Ja 635 Inscription in Jamme 1962. Lane Lane E.W. 1863-1893. PME Periplus Maris Erythraei. (See Casson 1989). RES Inscriptions in Répertoire ďépigraphie sémitique. (8 volumes). Pans: Imprimerie Nationale,

1900-1968. Ry 533 Sabaic inscription in Ryckmans 1955: 297-308.




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Paper read by A.F.L. Beeston at Arabia Antiqua, the First International Conference on the Conservation and Exploitation of the Archaeological Heritage of the Arabian Peninsula Held in the Palazzo Brancaccio, Rome, by the Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, on 28th-30th May 1991, but not published until now.

Edited for publication here by M.C.A. Macdonald, April 2005.

