Page 38 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

TOPOGRAPHY OF EDESSA 25
incident there died more than two thousand persons; while many of them were asleep at
night, the waters entered upon them suddenly and they were drowned.
In face of this disaster King Abgar acted energetically.
When the city was full of the sound of wailing and when king Abgar had seen this
damage that had taken place, he ordered that all the craftsmen of the city should take
away their booths from beside the river, and that no one should build a booth for himself
beside the river; through the expert [skill] of the surveyors and knowledgeable men, the
booths were placed as far as the breadth of the river [allowed] and they added to its
former measurements. For even though the waters were great and abundant, the actual
breadth of the river was small; it received the waters of twenty-five streams in their
confluence from all sides. King Abgar ordered that all those who resided in the portico
and carried out their occupation opposite the river should not pass the night in their
booths from the former Teshrin to Nisan, but that all the winter time five of thegeziraye
who guard the city should pass the night on the wall above the place where the waters
enter the city. When at night they observed and heard the sound of foreign waters
beginning to enter the city and . . .' Whoever heard [this] sound and was negligent and
did not go out [and shout], 'Behold the waters' would be punished for contempt because
he had despised the order of the king. This order was instituted from the time when the
event happened in this wise until eternity.
But our lord king Abgar ordered a building to be built as his royal dwelling, a winter
house [in] Beth Tabara—and there he used to dwell all the winter time; in the summer
he would go down to the new palace that had been built for him by the source of the
spring [of water]. His nobles also built for themselves buildings as dwelling places in the
neighbourhood in which the king was, in the High Street2 called Beth Sahraye.3 In
order that the former tranquillity of the city should be established, king Abgar ordered
that unpaid taxes from those who were inside the city and from those who dwelt in the
villages and on farms should be remitted, and that taxes should be suspended from them
for five years until the city had grown rich in its population and adorned with its build-
ings.4
This narrative confirms the course of the river through the city from west
to east and the location of the king's palace by the pools. The 'safe place on
the hill' which the king climbed to examine the flood for the first time
cannot be the high ground in the north-west of the city since he would then
have been obliged to cross the path of the waters. It must have been the

1 A few words are missing here. al details. The exits of the river in the eastern
2 Or, less probably, 'Corn market'. wall of the city were blocked by the accumu-
3 That is, palace-enclosure area, or area of lation of scum carried from the hills and from
pedlars. the city streets. Those houses of Edessa that
4 The Chronicle adds: 'Maryahb son of were made of bricks and clay collapsed under
Shemesh and Qayoma son of Magratat (the the pressure of the flood waters. Bodies and
vocalization of the last name is uncertain)— wood and domestic articles were carried away
these scribes of Edessa wrote down this event in the stream; beds, some with their dead
at the order of king Abgar, and Bardin and Bulid owners still upon them, were swept through the
who were in charge of the archives of Edessa east wall into the plain. These details may,
received it and placed it inside them [in their however, be a description of a flood of Edessa
capacity] as sharrire of the city'. An account of nearer to the time of the writer than that of
this flood in the anonymous 'Chr. Zuqnin', of A.D. 201; see pp. 203 f. below.
probably the eighth century, provides addition-

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