lanitic Gulf. Justinian then built the fortified monastery near Mount
Sinai, to guard the only pass by which Egypt could be entered without
the help of a fleet; and when it was found to be commanded by one of the
higher points of the mountain he beheaded the engineer who built it, and
remedied the fault, as far as it could be done, by a small fortress
on the higher ground. This monastery was held by the Egyptians, and
maintained out of the Egyptian taxes. When the Egyptians were formerly
masters of their own country, before the Persian and Greek conquests,
they were governed by a race of priests, and the temples were their only
fortresses.

[Illustration: 302.jpg FORTRESS NEAR MOUNT SINAI]

The temples of Thebes were the citadels of the capital, and the temples
of Elephantine guarded the frontier. So now, when the military prefect
is too weak to make himself obeyed, the emperor tries to govern through
means of the Christian priesthood; and when it is necessary for the
Egyptians to defend their own frontier, he builds a monastery and
garrisons it with monks.

Part of the Egyptian trade to the East was carried on through the
islands of Ceylon and Socotra; but it was chiefly in the hands of
uneducated Arabs of Ethiopia, who were little able to communicate to
the world much knowledge of the countries from which they brought their
highly valued goods. At Ceylon they met with traders from beyond the
Ganges and from China, of whom they bought the silk which Europeans had
formerly thought a product of Arabia. At Ceylon was a Christian church,
with a priest and a deacon, frequented by the Christians from Persia,
while the natives of the place were pagans. The coins there used were
Roman, borne thither by the course of trade, which during so many
centuries carried the gold and silver eastward. The trade was lately
turned more strongly into this channel because a war had sprung up
between the two tribes of Jewish Arabs, the Hexumitae of Abyssinia
on the coast of the Red Sea near Adule, and the Homeritae who dwelt in
Arabia on the opposite coast, at the southern end of the Red Sea. The
Homeritae had quarrelled with the Alexandrian merchants in the Indian
trade, and had killed some of them as they were passing their mountains
from India to the country of the Hexumitae.

Immediately after these murders the Hexumitae found the trade injured,
and they took up arms to keep the passage open for the merchants. Hadad
their king crossed