[3598] Called Arabia Felix to the present day.
[3599] The part of Arabia which joins up to Egypt, Arabia Petræa namely.
[3600] Strabo places this people as far south as the mouth of the Red Sea, i. e. on the east of the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. Forster (in his ‘Arabia,’ vol. ii.) takes this name to be merely an inversion of Beni Kahtan, the great tribe which mainly peoples, at the present day, central and southern Arabia.
[3601] Probably the people of Esebon, the Heshbon of Scripture, spoken of by Jerome as being the city of Sihon, king of the Amorites.
[3602] The “tent-people,” from the Greek σκηνὴ, “a tent.” This seems to have been a name common to the nomadic tribes of Arabia. Ammianus Marcellinus speaks of them as being the same as the Saraceni or Saracens.
[3603] The modern El Katieh or El Kas; which is the summit of a lofty range of sandstone hills on the borders of Egypt and Arabia Petræa, immediately south of the Sirbonian Lake and the Mediterranean Sea. On its western side was the tomb of Pompey the Great.
[3604] The same as the Amalekites of Scripture, according to Hardouin. Bochart thinks that they are the same as the Chavilæi, who are mentioned as dwelling in the vicinity of Babylon.
[3605] The position which Pliny assigns to this nation would correspond with the northern part of the modern district of the Hedjaz. Forster identifies them with the Cauraitæ, or Cadraitæ of Arrian, and the Darræ of Ptolemy, tracing their origin to the Cedar or Kedar, the son of Ishmael, mentioned in Genesis xxv. 13, and represented by the modern Harb nation and the modern town of Kedeyre. See Psalm cxx. 5: “Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar!”
[3606] An Arabian people, said to have descended from the eldest son of Ishmael, who had their original abodes in the north-western part of the Arabian peninsula, east and south-east of the Moabites and Edomites. Extending their territory, we find the Nabatæi of Greek and Roman history occupying nearly the whole of Arabia Petræa, along the north-east coast of the Red Sea, on both sides of the Ælanitic Gulf, and on the Idumæan mountains, where they had their capital, Petra, hewn out of the rock.
[3607] Now the Bahr-el-Soueys, or Gulf of Suez.