with a design showing the Egyptian St. Menas between two kneeling camels. Such vessels are supposed to have held water from a spring near the saint's tomb in Egypt (Paribeni 1907: 538, fig. 54), and this particular one may have been brought to Adulis by a pilgrim. Since Eritrean Independence, the National Museum of Eritrea has petitioned the Government of Ethiopia to return artifacts of these excavations. To date they have been denied. Previous colonial researches were underpinned by an old Ethiopian narrative. Most of these chronicles puts Adulis smack-dab at the middle of the Axumite kingdom and subsumes it as an integral part of this very kingdom. As a result, Adulis has been studied as part and parcel of the Axumite kingdom by most, if not all, scholars of the region. However, recent historical/archaeological sources challenge the Abyssinian paradigm in the sense that Adulis was the center of a kingdom that was not a constituent part of the Axumite kingdom, on the earlier period prior to the emergence of Aksum. See also Keskese Matara Nakfa Qohaito Sembel Notes References G W Bowersock. The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea wars on the eve of Islam. Oxford: University Press. 2013. (reviewed by Peter Thonemann in "Gates of Horn", Times Literary Supplement, 6 December 2013, pp. 9–10) Stuart Munro-Hay. Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh: University Press. 1991. Yuri M. Kobishchanov. Axum (Joseph W. Michels, editor; Lorraine T. Kapitanoff, translator). University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1979. Aksumite cities Archaeological sites in Eritrea Former populated places in Eritrea Massawa Northern Red Sea Region Ancient Greek geography of East Africa