with the god (Frazer, Golden Bough, IV, 76). Here seems to be some basis, at least, for identification of the god of the Incense-Land to whom Pliny gives the name Sabis; whom Glaser (Punt, etc., p. 46) thinks identical with Shams, the Sabaean sun-god, and whose name appears also in the capital city, Sabota or Sabbatha (Shabwa).
There is a suggestive similarity in the legions concerning the crater of Bir Barhut in the Hadramaut, and Aetna, on the top of which an ancient Latin poem describes the people offering incense to the celestial dieties. Formerly, Frazer says, victims were sacrificed also, probably to appease the spirits who were supposed to dwell there.
The Abyssinian Chronicle, tracing the descent of the monarchs of that people who migrated from the Incense-Land, heads the list with "Arwê the Serpent" (Salt, op. cit., p. 460) and Ludolfus in his Commentaries (III, 284) refers to the "great dragon who lived at Axum," said to have been burst asunder by the prayers of nine Christian saints. (See also James Fergusson, Tree and Serpent Worship; Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride and De Defectu Oraculorum.)
30. Syagrus is unquestionably Ras Fartak, 15° 36′ N., 52° 12′ E., a bluff headland rising to a height of about 2500 feet, visible for many miles along the coast. This name, meaning "wild boar" in Greek, is probably a corruption of the Arabic tribe-name saukar, plural sawâkir, appearing also in Saukira Bay, and in the modern village of Saghar. This was an incense-gathering folk, whose name Pliny assimilates to the Greek for "holy"—sacrus, from sakr, the root-form of saukar. See Glaser, Skizze, 180.
Yet the modern name Fartak, according to Forster (op. cit., II, 171), has the same meaning, "Wild Boar's Snout," the mediaeval Arabic geographers having possibly followed Ptolemy.
30. Dioscorida, (nearer the Arabian coast than the African in point of population and language, if not in the location as our author asserts), continues its name in the modern Socotra (12° 30′ N., 54° 0′ E.). Both forms are corruptions of the Sanscrit Dvipa Sukhâdâra, meaning "Island abode of bliss." Agatharchides refers to it as "Island of the Blest," a stopping-place for the voyagers between India and Arabia. How ancient the Hindu name may be is unknown; the sense possibly antedates the language in which it is expressed. An Egyptian tale of the XIIIth Egyptian dynasty (18th century B. C.), recounted by Golénischef (Report of the Vth Congress of Orientalists, Berlin, 1881), speaks of it as "Island of the Genius," Pa-anch, the home of the King of the Incense-Land, and in the "Genius" may be recognized the jinn or spirit of the sacred tree. There is good cause
