- This passage is not authoritative enough to justify us in
believing that the mediaeval Abyssinians or Nubians did use elephants in
war, for Marco has already erred in ascribing that practice to the Blacks
of Zanjibar.
There can indeed be no doubt that elephants from the countries on the west
of the Red Sea were caught and tamed and used for war, systematically and
on a great scale, by the second and third Ptolemies, and the latter
(Euergetes) has commemorated this, and his own use of Troglodytic and
Ethiopic elephants, and the fact of their encountering the elephants of
India, in the Adulitic Inscription recorded by Cosmas.
This author however, who wrote about A.D. 545, and had been at the Court
of Axum, then in its greatest prosperity, says distinctly: "The Ethiopians
do not understand the art of taming elephants; but if their King should
want one or two for show they catch them young, and bring them up in
captivity." Hence, when we find a few years later (A.D. 570) that there
was one great elephant, and some say thirteen elephants,[3] employed in
the army which Abraha, the Abyssinian Ruler of Yemen led against Mecca, an
expedition famous in Arabian history as the War of the Elephant, we are
disposed to believe that these must have been elephants imported from
India.
