The monument of Adulis was a marble chair inscribed in the 27th year of an unnamed king of Aksum, and bore a triumphal inscription that told how the preexisting small district states in the region were for the first time brought under a single sovereignty to form the Axumite empire. It listed the series of military campaigns undertaken to achieve the consolidation of the Axumite empire throughout ancient Ethiopia and Arabia. The monument of Adulis is also sometimes called “the thrown of Adulis” since it resembles a thrown. Cosmas Indicopleustes tells us about the monument of Adulis1 as follows:
“On the coast of Ethiopia, two miles2 off from the shore, is a town called Adule, which forms the port of the Axomites and is much frequented by traders who come from Alexandria and the Elanitic Gulf3. Here is to be seen a marble chair, just as you enter the town on the western side by the road which leads to Axomis. … It is made of costly white marble such as we employ for marble tables, but not of the sort which comes from Proconnesus4.”
“Its base is quadrangular, and it rests at the four corners on four slender and elegant pillars, with one in the middle of greater girth and grooved in spiral form. The pillars support the seat of the chair as well as its back against which one leans, and there are also sides to right and left. The whole chair with its base, five pillars, seat and back and sides to right and left, has been sculptured from a single block into this form. It measures about two cubits and a half5, and is in shape like the chair we call the Bishop’s throne.”
“Behind the Chair is another marble of basanite stone, three cubits6 in height and of quadrangular form, like a tablet, which at the centre of its upper portion rises to a sharp point whence the sides slope gently down in the form of the letter lambda (X), but the main body of the slab is rectangular. This tablet has now fallen down behind the Chair, and the lower part has been broken and destroyed. Both the marble7 and the chair itself are covered over with Greek characters. … We found also sculptured on the back of the Chair figures of Hercules8 and Mercury9…”
Cosmas wrongly thought that the inscription on the white marble chair was a continuation of the inscription on the basanite tablet. This was because the first lines of the inscription containing the introduction and the name of the King were missing. However, the two inscriptions had nothing in common except their being placed near to each other. The inscription on the basanite tablet related the series of conquests which Ptolemy III Euergetes10 had made in Asia in the early years of his reign, starting from his victories in the first phase of the Laodicean war11 and culminating with his successful subjugation of Central Asia. On the other hand, the inscription on the marble chair referred to conquests made in ancient Ethiopia and Arabia by an Axumite King, who lived some centuries after Ptolemy III Euergetes of Egypt.
Today these valuable monuments of antiquity are lost. They are burried in the ruins of Adulis. We only have a record of their contents from Cosmas Indicopleustes‘ book, the Christian Topography12. We hope one day they will be uncovered by an archaeological excavation.
- The monument of Adulis is often referred to by its Latin designation “Monumentum Adulitanum”. ↩︎
- About 3.2 kilometers. ↩︎
- The Elanitic Gulf is today known as the Gulf of Aqaba. ↩︎
- Today Proconnesus is called Marmara Island, and it is the 2nd largest Turkish island. From antiquity it has been famous for its high quality, fine-grained marble. ↩︎
- About 114 centimeters. ↩︎
- About 137 centimeters. ↩︎
- He means the basanite tablet. ↩︎
- Hercules was a demi-god hero with superhuman strength, and an ultimate symbol of masculine power and bravery. He was worshipped as a guardian. ↩︎
- Mercury was one of the Roman gods. He was the god of commerce, trade, communication and transportation among others. He was also regarded as the messenger of the gods. ↩︎
- Ptolemy III Euergetes was the third pharaoh of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt from 246 to 222 BC. ↩︎
- 246-245 B.C. ↩︎
- The Christian Topography of Cosmas, An Egyptian Monk. Translated from the Greek, and Edited, with Notes and Introduction by J.W. McCrindle (1897). Printed at the Broford Press for Hakluyt Society: London. ↩︎