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If these are the islands actually meant by Agatharcides, it is the earliest notice of them extant.
The only work of his which is preserved, is a Treatise on the Erythraean Sea; and this we possess only in the Bibliotheca of Photius, and incorporated in the history of Diodorus Siculus. The authority of Agatharcides was very high among the ancients. Strabo, Pliny, and Diodorus, always mention him with the utmost respect, and place implicit confidence in his details.
But the most curious and important portion of the work of Agatharcides on the Red Sea, relates to Abyssinia; for in this work we meet with the first genuine characteristics of this nation.
In the extract we have already given from Agatharcides respecting Arabia, he expressly mentions that the Gerrheans and Sabeans are the centre of all the commerce that passes between Asia and Europe, and that these are the nations which have enriched the Ptolemais: this statement, taken in conjunction with the fact that his description of the coast of the Red Sea reaches no farther than Sabaea on the one side, and Ptolemais Theron on the other, seems decisive of the truth of the opinion, that in the time of Philometor the Egyptians did not trade directly to India.
Six hundred and fifty years after Isaiah bore his testimony to the commerce of Sabæa, we have the authority of Agatharcides, that the merchants of this country traded to India; that the great wealth and luxury of Sabæa were principally derived from this trade; and that, at the time when Egypt possessed the monopoly of the Indian trade, with respect to Europe, the Sabeans enjoyed a similar advantage with regard to Egypt.
The particulars of this trade between India and Egypt, by means of the Arabians, will be afterwards detailed, and its great antiquity traced and proved; at present we have alluded to it merely to bear us out in our position, that Indian ships, laden with Indian commodities, frequenting the ports of Sabaea, and those ports being described by Agatharcides as the limits of his knowledge of this coast of the Red Sea, we are fully justified in concluding, that, in the reign of Philometor, there was not only no direct trade to India, but no inducement to such trade; and that 146 years after the death of Alexander, the Greek sovereigns of Egypt had done little to complete what that monarch had projected, and in part accomplished by the navigation of Nearchus the communication by sea between Alexandria and India.
It has been well observed, "that when Pliny speaks of the discoveries on the coast of Malabar in his own age, and adds, that the names he mentions are new, and not to be found in previous writers, we ought to consider him as speaking of all those who had followed the authority of the Macedonians, or the school of Alexandria; of which, in this branch of science, Eratosthenes and Agatharcides were the leaders."
In his description of the coast of the Red Sea he commences with Arsinoe, and goes down the western side as far as Ptolemais Theron; a place so called, because elephants were there hunted and taken, and are still, according to Bruce. Agatharcides adds, that the usual navigation was to this place for elephants.
The sources of the Nile were hidden by the barbarism of the tribes on its banks; but by this time travellers had reached the region of tropical rains; and Agatharcides said that the overflow in Egypt arose from the rains in Upper Ethiopia.
It was made by Agatharcides, who, when the philosopher Heracleides Lembus filled the office of secretary to the government under Philometor, had been his scribe and reader. Agatharcides gives a curious account of the half-savage people on these coasts, and of the more remarkable animals and products of the country.
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