inhabitants. In Matthew of Paris and John of Mandeville, the ten tribes and the
“tartars,” broadly defined, were considered one and the same thing. Thus,
the inclusion of Arzareth in a map of “Tartary” required Ortelius to rework
the geographical and historical relationships between the ten tribes and the
Tartars. Ortelius cannot leave the two entities entangled, so he divides Tartary
between them. What he accomplishes is a marvelous patchwork of new facts
and old myth,^64 meant to disentangle the two entities and situate them in
relation to each other in a manner that makes sense.
The northern part of Asia on Ortelius’s map is indeed a region imbued
with fantastic qualities. A close look at the northeastern corner reveals a
concentration of legends, myths, and facts denser than anywhere else in
the entireTheatrum.In this little corner, we find Prester John, St. Thomas,
a horde named after the tribe Dan “residing in the dark north.” North
of Tartaria, touching the North Pole itself, is another territory, much less
defined geographically, which is designated as home to the horde of
Naphtali (Nepthalitaru ̄horda), “named after one of the ten tribes” (ab una 10
Tribuum Israelis nomine): “others call [these hordes] incorrectly Euthalites
[Hephthalites].” That is to say, the horde of Naphtali is named after one of
the ten tribes, but it is not that tribe. Ortelius does not tell us why the
Hephthalites took the name of the tribe of Naphtali. Why does he bother
with such a bizarre story?
The Hephthalites, or White Huns, were a real entity, Central Asian no-
mads whose original homeland was northwest of the Chinese Great Wall
(whence they had been displaced by the Huns). Their moment of glory came
during the fifth and sixth centuries when they defeated the Scythians and
invaded northern India and parts of Persia, making themselves known not
only to Chinese but also to Persian and Byzantine historians. Best known for
defeating the Sassanid king Peroz I (r. 458 – 484 )in 476 and the Indian Guptas
in 480 , the Hephthalites were driven away in 561 by a coalition of Persians and
other nomads led by Peroz’s grandson, the illustrious Khosro I (or Anushir-
avan, r. 531 – 579 ). The Hephthalites were then quite forgotten, their memory
kept alive mostly in histories that relied on the Byzantine chronicles that
mentioned them.^65
A wandering people in Central Asia with a name similar to that of one of
the ten tribes was enough to demand an explanation. It seems that Ortelius
was unsure if the Hephthalites were indeed an Israelite tribe, but could not
ignore the similarity in name. Perhaps he was also aware of the traditions,
expressed by Benjamin of Tudela, according to which the tribe of Naphtali at
one point settled in the region where the Hephthalite kingdom existed. He
thus came up with the story that the Naphtalite horde was given the name of
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