Chronicle of Edessa

[...that they wrote for them writings for their management in the city. And he cast them in the royal treasury in Daisan Edessa and [those] born in true faith. And things that were found in them, he brought out and made them known to the protector: Abgar ordered; and let us build for him his temple in the city, the place that [was] built from the waters of the city and from where the collectors and his enemies and people left it. The protector wearing before him five years in the height of the fortresses and until the generations and generations, the heavens were crowned.]

2 [And in that time, Mani was born.]

3 [In the year six hundred and thirteen: in the time of Diocletian the king, the walls of Edessa fell a second time.]

[In the year six hundred and twenty...]

These Acts, and the Edict of King Abgar, were written down by Mar-Jabus Bar-Semes and Kajumas Bar-Magartat, Edessene Notaries: and they brought them into the Edessene Archive, [being] Bardinus and Bulidus, prefects of the same Archive, as witnesses of public faith.

IX. In the five hundred and seventeenth year, Abgar built a Palace 1 in his town.

X. In the five hundred and fifty-first year, Manes 2 was born.

XI. In the six hundred and fourteenth year, under Emperor Diocletian, the walls of Edessa fell for the second time.

XII. In the six hundred and twentieth year—

N O T Æ.

1 Palace. Concerning which see above, page 392.

2 Manes. The beginning of this heresy is accurately described by St. Epiphanius in his book On Weights and Measures, in these words: In the ninth year of their empire (he speaks of Valerian and Gallienus, which was the year of Christ 261), Manes, or the Manichaean, came up from Persia, when he also came to Archelaus, Bishop of the Caschari of Mesopotamia, for the sake of disputation, and having been overcome, he fled secretly, etc.; and in Heresies, 66, concerning the Manichaeans, his sectaries: In the times, he says, of Emperor Aurelian, these were [present], about the fourth year of his reign: namely, about the year of Christ 273, into which the fourth year of Aurelian falls. Therefore Manes was in his twenty-first year when he first invaded Mesopotamia from Persia: for he was born, according to our Chronicle, in the year of the Greeks 551, of Christ 240, which has been observed by no one until now regarding his birthday.

3 Year 614. Of Christ 303, the 20th of Diocletian. The same author of our Chronicle adds the month at the end in these words: [...In the year six hundred and fourteen, in the time of Diocletian the king, in the month of Iyar May:]

[Second, its (Edessa's) walls were thrown down under Emperor Diocletian in the month of May, in the year 614. Dionysius hands down the same concerning the submergence of that city in his Chronicle:]

[In the year 614 of Alexander the Great: a furious flood of waters snatched Edessa the city and destroyed from its walls things that face the East; and it entered inside the city, and everything that it met, it took away to a distance; and it caused great destruction to the sons of men and to the cattle, and it destroyed the whole plain of Edessa and of Charrhae.]