Kinaidokolpitai

The Kinaidokolpitai were a people inhabiting the Hejaz in western Arabia in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, according to Greek and Latin authors.

For a time they were raiders and pirates preying on the incense trade until defeated by the Kingdom of Aksum, which imposed tribute on them.

[3][4] Glen Bowersock interprets this as an obscenity (if Greek),[4] but Hélène Cuvigny and Christian Robin consider it to have a more positive connotation associated with erotic dancers (to which κίναιδος could also refer).

[9] The Kinaidokolpitai next appear as one of the peoples subdued by the king of Aksum[g] according to the Adulis throne inscription, which dates from some time between the mid-2nd and early 3rd century.

There are two slightly different ways of translating this inscription:[16] I sent both a fleet and an army of infantry against the Arabitai and the Kinaidocolpitai who dwell across the Red Sea, and I brought their kings under my rule.

Regarding the location of the Kinaidokolpitai, the inscriptions says only that it lay between former Nabataean port of Leuke Kome[h] and the land of Saba, as did that of Arabitai.

[20] Cosmas Indicopleustes, who copied the now lost inscription in 548 or 549, glosses Arabitai and Kinaidokolpitai as "the inhabitants of Arabia Felix",[21] which is uninformative.

The author has probably identified them with the Kenites of the Bible (Septuagint Kinaioi), an identification he may have found strengthened by the spellings in Josephus (Kenetidai and Keneaidai).

[22] The implication of the Adulis throne inscription is that in the middle of the 2nd century or early in the 3rd, the Kinaidokolpitai were raiding the incense route, both its sea-lanes and overland roads, that connected South Arabia and the Horn of Africa with the Roman Empire.