Page 83 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

70 THE BLESSING OF JESUS AND THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY

conversion of King Abgar to Christianity; the legend may well have a sub-
stratum of fact. It no doubt arose while the monarchy was still popular at
Edessa. Scholars have maintained, with good reason, that the king in whose
reign Christianity made a notable advance in Edessa was not Abgar Ukkama,
but his namesake Abgar the Great, whose long reign spanned the latter half
of the second, and the beginning of the third centuries. Both were sons of
Ma'nu. Abgar Ukkama's wife is said to be Shalmath daughter of Mihrdad
(Meherdates);' the wife of Abgar the Great may also have been a Shalmath,
the daughter of Ma'nu whose statue stood on the column of the Citadel
mount.2 In the legend the king of 'the Assyrians' (that is, of Adiabene) at the
time of Abgar Ukkama is called not Ezad (as in Josephus) but Narsai. And
in fact the king of Adiabene at the time of Abgar the Great was called
Narseh; he was drowned in the Great Zab by the Parthians for his pro-
Roman sympathies.3
Abgar the Great may have been well disposed towards the Christians; he
need not have actually adopted the new religion. His contemporary Julius
Africanus calls him a 'holy man'; elsewhere he is called 'most pious and
learned', but he is not termed a Christian. The coins of Edessa carry the
portrait of this Abgar—a bearded head, wearing with assurance and dignity
the great tiara and diadem of his office.4 He was, we are told, friendly with
Bardaisan, the philosopher-poet of Edessa, and he must have been a man of
culture. He was a wise administrator, concerned with the welfare of his
subjects. It was he who outlawed the practice of castration at Edessa—but
this need not have been, as our source suggests, under the influence of
Christianity. For Abgar was also a man of the world. He had, no doubt,
like Bardaisan, met ambassadors from India, and he visited Rome towards
the end of his life.5 We should not forget that even the idealized Abgar of the
Addai legend did not submit altogether to the principles of Christianity, for
tradition has it that the great altar in his palace remained; there, like some
kings of Israel, he continued to worship the planets in the privacy of his own
courtyards. Abgar the Great is likely to have favoured Christianity for
reasons of state. He was too shrewd a statesman not to have foreseen the growing
threat to the independence of Edessa. Rome could no longer control this
region from afar through puppet princes. The Parthians menaced her com-
munications with the East, and she could keep the roads open only by
maintaining garrisons to the east of the Euphrates herself. In these circum-
stances Abgar's friendship for the Christians was sound policy. It secured
1 See pp. 78 f. This may be a reminiscence of confusing Abgar Ukkama with Abgar the
the Parthian prince who visited Edessa at that Great, p. 14 above.
time; p. 12 above. 4 PI. 286 (i).
2 See p. 19 above. 5 There is no foundation for the hypothesis
3 Procopius relates that a 'toparch* Abgar of Harnack that Abgar was in direct touch with
visited Rome in the reign of Augustus; he is Eleutherius, Bishop of Rome from 174 to 189.

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