Climax Mons
Κλίμαξ ὄρος
Climax Mons (Κλίμαξ ὄρος, Ptol.), a mountain of Arabia Felix, mentioned as a landmark several times in Ptolemy's description of the country (6.7). Niebuhr identifies it with Sumâra, or Nakîl Sumâra, the largest and highest mountain traversed by him in Yemen. (Descrip. de l'Arabie, vol. iii. p. 207.) This is confirmed by Forster (Arabia, vol. i. p. 94, vol. ii. p. 270), who suggests that its Greek name, nearly identical in meaning with the Arabic Nakîl, may be derived from the flights of steps, scooped in the rocky sides of the mountains, by which, according to Niebuhr, the roads ascend the steep hills of the Djebal (l.c. n.*).
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.