Sumhuram
a Pleiades
place
resource
Creators: D.T. Potts Copyright © The Contributors. Sharing and remixing permitted under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (cc-by).
Creators: D.T. Potts Copyright © The Contributors. Sharing and remixing permitted under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (cc-by).
Last modified
Jun 05, 2023 11:59 AM
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History
A small, fortified town that served as an outpost for the Ḥaḑramawt kingdom from the first to seventh centuries. The archaeological site and its surrounding landscape are known by the modern name Khor Rori, and the town is tentatively identified as Ptolemy's Abyssapolis, and the port of Moscha Limen of the Periplus Maris Erythraei.
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https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/39264
17.0389241927, 54.4341534789
- Representative Locations:
- Less than certain: OSM location of Khor Rori (330 BC - AD 640) accuracy: +/- 20 meters.
- Less than certain: Sumhuram located on Moscha Limen (330 BC - AD 640)
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None
settlement
Barrington Atlas: BAtlas 4 D2 Abyssa
The Barrington Atlas Directory notes: Khor Rori? OMN
D.T. Potts, DARMC, Gabriel Mckee, R. Talbert, Sean Gillies, Jeffrey Becker, and Tom Elliott, 'Sumhuram: a Pleiades place resource', Pleiades: A Gazetteer of Past Places, 2023 <https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/39264> [accessed: 20 April 2024]
{{cite web |url=https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/39264 |title=Places: 39264 (Sumhuram) |author=Potts, D. |accessdate=April 20, 2024 3:53 am |publisher=Pleiades}}
This site is written up at http://home.kpn.nl/~janm_schreurs/Sumhuram.htm. It interests me because we have an Abisson in Britain, possibly near Portpatrick on the SW coast of Scotland next to the sea trench in the North Channel across to Ireland, where ancient mariners would have been aware that deep sea would prevent safety anchoring if caught off a lee shore. Much the same holds for Khor Rori on the coast of Oman. Therefore I question the assertion in Wikipedia that the name derived from waterfalls upstream from the ancient port. Also Ptolemy mentioned Αβυσσαπολις and I have not find an authority for Abyssa.