Sabtah (Part 2/3)

Digging into various sources to identify the geography of the Nile

Nov 29, 2023

Once again we turn to our old friend Josephus who tends to have some personal bias relating to the political matters of the era in his works, but when it comes to geography we have no reason to suggest anything nefarious in his writings. Regarding these regions of the Nile, Josephus writes in his Antiquities of the Jews Book I:

Sabathes founded the Sabathens: they are now called by the Greeks Astaborans. Sabactas settled the Sabactens: and Ragmus the Ragmeans: and he had two sons, the one of whom, Judadas, settled the Judadeans; a nation of the western Ethiopians, and left them his name: as did Sabas, to the Sabeans.1

As usual with Josephus, the clues in his writing begin to help us align these names with various places. First we can isolate Ragmus and the Ragmeans, as well as his two sons reportedly named “Judadas” and “Sabas” (obvious recollections of “Dedan” and “Sheba”), and set them aside for a later discussion of Raamah, and his two sons. Now what is interesting is that for the name Sabtah, Josephus calls him “Sabathes”, while Sabtecah becomes “Sabactas” with both terms retaining the original “Saba” root. We also see that the hard “c” sound is only retained in the latter of the two. If we are to postulate for an ‘in-between’ term for Sabathes and Sabtah, it would read something like “Sabatah” in Hebrew; while Sabtecah would become “Sabatacah”.

The most curious aspect of this geographic identification of the Sabathes is usage of the term “Astaborans”. This is obviously related to the local River named Atbarah which bounded the Kingdom of Meroe in the North East, and normally represented their center of power. The Greek geographer Agatharchides called it “Astabaras”2 likewise so did Ptolemy in his Geography.3

However the earliest record of the term is found in Strabo’s Geography4 where he calls this river the “Astaboras”, giving rise to Josephus’s usage of the term “Astabora-ns” to imply those living around the Atbara River, in the Kingdom of Meroe. In this work he describes multiple details of their city, region, and etymology. He writes:

Their largest royal seat is the city of Meroë, of the same name as the island. The shape of the island is said to be that of a shield. Its size is perhaps exaggerated. Its length is about 3000, and its breadth 1000 stadia. It is very mountainous, and contains great forests. The inhabitants are nomades, who are partly hunters and partly husbandmen. There are also mines of copper, iron, gold, and various kinds of precious stones. It is surrounded on the side of Libya by great hills of sand, and on that of Arabia by continuous precipices. In the higher parts on the south, it is bounded by the confluent streams of the rivers Astaboras5, Astapus6, and Astasobas7. On the north is the continuous course of the Nile to Egypt, with its windings, of which we have spoken before.
Above Meroë is Psebo8, a large lake, containing a well-inhabited island. As the Libyans occupy the western bank of the Nile, and the Ethiopians the country on the other side of the river, they thus dispute by turns the possession of the islands and the banks of the river, one party repulsing the other, or yielding to the superiority of its opponent.

The full text is much longer, and very interesting, but for our purposes we need to look at the terms “Astaboras”, “Astapus” and “Astasobas”. We can separate these terms out into their prefix “asta” since all three of the words retain this root. According to some scholars such as Richard Pankhurst they make the argument that “Astaboras” should be translated as “River of the Boras people” where the prefix ‘Asta” comes from the root term for “water” in Proto-Nubian, “Asti”.9 The suffix “boras” in the first term relates to the people located there in Roman sources called the “Boras”, or variously “Bera”10, and potentially related to the term “Beja”.

Since the water in the region is clearly necessary to all of these terms, let us deviate for a moment to discuss the hydrological geography of the Nubian Nile. The first major river confluence that feeds into the Nile is the aforementioned Atbara, sometimes called the “Black Nile”, or even “Red Nile” (I would prefer this term for the Gash/Mareb tribute branch of the Atbarah). Starting around Meroe proper this river reaches all the way into Ethiopia separating into two rivers further south. In ancient periods this river had an earlier tributary called the “Gash”, which gives their name to the Gash culture found in the region. Currently the Gash is a dry river bed that, without a serious storm, rarely feeds into the Atbara, instead the river Mareb ends in the desert.

Atbara's major tributary is the Tekeze river, called the “Setit” in Nubia, and parts of Ethiopia. The Tekeze is itself a major river that flows through the Ethiopian highlands and acts as a major border for the tribes in the region. Backing up support for this river’s importance is the Ethiopian holy text Kebra Nagast which states King Menelik followed this river on his return trip back home to his capital. There are even historians suggesting this is the true location of the Ark of the Covenant11; attesting to quite a large historic importance for the people of the region. In native Ge’ez the name “Tekeze” just means ‘River’ helping certify it being the Ethiopian equivalent of the Nubian term “Asta”.

Back up the Nile, further south at the confluence near Khartoum is where the Blue Nile diverts south into Ethiopia. In our previous discussion of Khartoum it was postulated that the name was also related to the “meeting” place, possibly of rivers. The Blue Nile travels 900 miles twisting and turning, winding itself up the highlands starting at Lake Tana, not far from the capital of Ethiopia Addis Ababa. This area forms the core of the Amhara region and people Historical associations to peoples living along the Blue Nile would correlate to the Ethiopians of the highlands - as opposed to the Eritreans north of the Tekeze.

Where the Blue Nile begins is where the White Nile separates, continuing all the way south from Lake Albert through the marshy Sudd that was unnavigable even for Roman expeditions to the region until the industrial era. Anything beyond the Sudd was unknown, even the origin of the Nile river. In fact, during this period the most prevalent and accepted belief was that the Nile wound its way all the way through Africa. Possibly they believed the Nile and Niger - West Africa’s major river - met at some point in the Sahara, and they believed it was fed by the Atlas mountain range in North Africa. We now know the White Nile flows all the way from Lake Victoria in the South, and doesn’t snake around the entire continent of Africa.

Returning back to Josephus it becomes obvious that his identification of Sabtah with the river Astaboras, and the Astaborans, is referring to the people bounded in the north by the Atbarah, and Tekeze rivers, and in the south by the Blue Nile and Ethiopian highlands around Lake Tana. There is good reason to believe Josephus’s identification based on etymological grounds since “At-bara” is clearly a phonological shift from the term “Asta-Bora” after the term “Asta” shifted into “At”. This would help us place the Astasobas as the Blue Nile, which makes sense given the ancient city “Soba” we discussed at the confluence of Blue and White Niles. This also aligns with our identification of “Seba” as Nilotics, who were located around this river continuing further south, and were likely the first people to penetrate the Sudd.

Link to the next post

This was mostly a look at the geography of the region, which will enable us to identify not just Sabtah, but the rest of Cush’s children and serves as a lynch pin in the entire theory of Cush. Next time we will finish up this discussion quickly.

Please leave any comments, criticisms, or suggestions as I’d love to include any useful information that might have slipped through the cracks!

Sabtah (Part 2/3)

Digging into various sources to identify the geography of the Nile

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