is no doubt that in the time of that Jewish king some intercourse was kept up between the kingdom of Israel in its brief flicker of power and prosperity, and the coasts of the Red Sea and southern Arabia. After the smashing up of the Hebrew state by the Assyrians there are good reasons for assuming that a number of the dispersed Israelites migrated to Abyssinia, as no doubt they did to other parts of the Sabæan Empire. Jewish monotheism always had a certain fascination (in the days before Christianity and Islam) for the peoples of Arabia and of Mauritania. This influence was most felt after the final destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and the subsequent dispersal of the Jews in all directions. Several princes in southwestern Arabia adopted the Jewish faith, more or less, and the Jewish settlers in Abyssinia also appear to have acted as missionaries in converting the savage, nominally Semitic, partly Gala rulers of Abyssinia to the principles of the Jewish faith, into which they wove Jewish legends, such as the glory and power of Solomon. A similar influence impressed on the Arab mind the Solomon of the legends. The real son of David was no doubt an unimportant Semitic prince who borrowed a little civilisation from his Phœnician, Egyptian, and Sabæan neighbours. But the Greek influence emanating from Egypt displaced for a time the Persian and Jewish culture in Abyssinia. In the northern parts of that (then) collection of Arab and Gala kingdoms, Greek began to be used as a second language, the speech of the Court itself being a foreign tongue (Ge’ez), derived from the Himyaritic or some early south Semitic language. Auxuma--the modern Auxum--in the kingdom or province of Tigre (northeastern Abyssinia) and near the more modern town of Adua, became an important trade centre, frequented by many Greek merchants, some of whom seem to have occasionally returned to their homes in Egypt by way of the Atbara and the Nile. Others forestalled the Portuguese by entering into trade relations or actually undertaking journeys which revealed to them the existence of Lake Tsana and the upper waters of the Blue Nile. Cosmas Indicopleustes, a Byzantine Greek, who traded with India in the early part of the sixth century of our era, called at the port of Adulis (near Masawa) in 520 A.D. He discovered at this place a monument which contained two separate inscriptions. The monument was apparently one erected at the orders of Ptolemy III. (Philadelphus), who reigned in Egypt from 285 to 247 B.C. This Ptolemy led and sent expeditions which made a partial conquest of the coast regions of northern Abyssinia, and added to the Egyptian Empire of that day a good deal of what now constitutes the modern Italian colony of Eritrea.[9]