Krauss also mentions an older etymology using ??? (hals = sea).

Professor Emil Schürer, however, holds in the 1912 Dictionary of the Bible:

The view that the alabarch was the head of the Jewish community is certainly wrong. He is in all probability identical with the ?????????, whose office was that of chief superintendent of customs on the Arabian frontier, i.e. on the east side of the Nile. A 'vectigal Arabarchiæ per Ægyptum atque Augustamnicam constitutum' is mentioned in the Codex Justin. IV. lxi. 9; an inscription found at Koptos contains a tariff fixing 'how much is to be raised by those who farm the ?????????? [?] at Koptos under the arabarchy'; see the text of this inscription in Bulletin de corresp. hellénique, xx. [1896] 174-176; on the office of the alabarch in general, see the Literature in Schürer, GJV iii. 88 f., and add Wilcken, Greichische Ostraka, i. [1899] 347-351). Perhaps it is the office of the alabarch that is in view when Josephus says that the Romans 'continued (to the Jews of Alexandria) the position of trust given them by the kings, namely, the watching of the river' (c. Apion. ii. 5 fin.: 'maximam vero eis fidem olim a regibus datam conservaverunt, id est fluminis custodiam totiusque custodiæ' [the last word is certainly corrupt]). The 'watching of the river' refers to watching it in the interests of levying customs. In any case the alabarch was not an official of the Jewish community, but a man who held a prominent place in civil life.--Tiberius Alexander, a son of the alabarch Alexander, even reached the highest grades of a Roman military career, although at the expense of renouncing his ancestral religion.

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