The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam by G. W. Bowersock (review)

This brief book offers a lively introduction to the early history of Ethiopia and its relations with South Arabia. In it Bowersock opens up for readers the world of ancient East Africa primarily through the careful exegesis of two inscriptions that once were found on a now lost monument, the throne of Adulis, for which the book is titled. Our knowledge of this ancient structure comes entirely from the famous sixth-century traveler and geographer, Cosmas Indicopleustes, who saw the monument in the city of Adulis on the coast of the Red Sea sometime around 525 c.e. Cosmas had been tasked with making a transcription of these Greek inscriptions for the Ethiopian king in Axum, and apparently he kept a copy for himself, which he then included in his Christian Topography.

Bowersock’s decision to focus on this pair of vanished inscriptions may initially seem a bit odd, particularly since so many other inscriptions from the region do survive. Nevertheless, this is partly explained by the fact that this book was commissioned for a series on emblematic objects or events, but also by the fact that one of the inscriptions in question “is undoubtedly the earliest of all known Axumite royal inscriptions” (45). Moreover, the nature of the object itself, with inscriptions from two different periods and its description during a third period, enables it to serve as an emblem of ancient Ethiopia in three distinct periods: the Hellenistic period, the early Roman Empire, and late antiquity.

Accordingly, the object affords Bowersock an opportunity to survey the history of Ethiopia in antiquity from the Ptolemies to the rise of Islam through the interpretation of its inscriptions and Cosmas’s account. Yet in this respect the book is seemingly a bit mistitled, at least in its subtitle: “Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam.” Only about twenty-five pages at the end of the book concern the wars of the sixth century and the rise of Islam, with the remainder largely focused on earlier events. One imagines that “the Eve of Islam” may have been added to increase sales, and readers interested specifically in the conflicts in South Arabia during the sixth century as a backdrop for the beginnings of Islam should probably look instead to another recent (and even more brief) publication by Bowersock, Empires in Collision in Late Antiquity (Brandeis University Press, 2012).

The book begins with a description of the throne itself, at least as reported by Cosmas, who is then himself the focus of the following chapter. The third chapter focuses on the Hellenistic inscription, which is placed in the broader context of Ptolemy III’s rule and dated between 246–44 b.c.e. This early inscription, it is worth noting, was found not on the throne itself but on a stele that stood immediately behind it. The next chapter considers the throne’s inscription, which Bowersock dates to the late second or early third century. It preserves a record of imperial conquest in East Africa and beyond that Bowersock correlates with other roughly contemporary inscriptions from the region. Bowersock then turns in the subsequent chapters to the topic of Ethiopia’s conversion to Christianity and the intriguing role that Judaism played in the cultures of South Arabia during late antiquity. The final three chapters cover respectively the bloody conflict between Jews and Christians in South Arabia during the early sixth century; the involvement of the Romans and Persians in this regional conflict; and the rise of Islam in the early seventh.

I found least successful those chapters to which the subtitle draws the reader’s focus: the final chapters in which Bowersock attempts to build connections with the beginnings of Islam. Bowersock seems to have more confidence in the accuracy of the early Islamic historical sources than I believe is warranted (see e.g. 159 n.15). Moreover, his criticisms of proposals by Hawting...