Note 256 — Chapter XII · EGYPT.

Inland lay the primeval Teimâ, the son of Ishmael of Genesis, enumerated by the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pilesar in the eighth century before Christ among his conquests, named by the prophet Jeremiah together with Sidon, around which gather in a remarkable way Assyrian, Egyptian, Arabian relations, the further unfolding of which, after bold travellers have opened up the place, we may await from Oriental research. In Teimâ itself Euting recently found Aramaic inscriptions of the oldest epoch (Nöldeke, Sitzungsberichte der Berliner Akademie, 1884, p. 813 f.) From the not far distant place Medâin-Sâlih (Hijr) proceed certain coins modelled after the Attic, which in part replace the owl of Pallas by that image of a god which the Egyptians designate as Besa the lord of Punt, i.e. of Arabia (Erman, Zeitschrift für Numismatik, ix. 296 f.) We have already mentioned the Nabataean inscriptions just found there (p. 148, note 3). Not far from thence, near ’Ola (el-Ally) inscriptions have been found, which correspond in the writing and in the names of gods and kings to those of the South-Arabian Minaeans, and show that these had a considerable station here, sixty days’ journey from their home, but on the frankincense-route mentioned by Eratosthenes, from Minaea to Aelana; and alongside of these others of a cognate but not identical South-Arabian stock (D. H. Müller in the Berichte der Wiener Akademie of 17th December 1884). The Minaean inscriptions belong beyond doubt to the pre-Roman period. As on the annexation of the Nabataean kingdom by Trajan these districts were abandoned (p. 152), from that time another south-Arabian tribe may have ruled there.