would find the difference very
small by which these roads fail of being equal in length, not more
indeed than fifteen furlongs; for the road from Athens to Pisa wants
fifteen furlongs of being fifteen hundred, while the road to Heliopolis
from the sea reaches that number completely. From Heliopolis however,
as you go up, Egypt is narrow; for on the one side a mountain-range
belonging to Arabia stretches along by the side of it, going in a
direction from the North towards the midday and the South Wind,
tending upwards without a break to that which is called the Erythraian
Sea, in which range are the stone- quarries which were used in cutting
stone for the pyramids at Memphis. On this side then the mountain
ends where I have said, and then takes a turn back; and where it is
widest, as I was informed, it is a journey of two months across from
East to West; and the borders of it which turn towards the East are said
to produce frankincense. Such then is the nature of this mountain-range;
and on the side of Egypt towards Libya another range extends, rocky
and enveloped in sand: in this are the pyramids, and it runs in the same
direction as those parts of the Arabian mountains which go towards the
midday. So then, I say, from Heliopolis the land has no longer a great
extent so far as it belongs to Egypt, and for about four days' sail up the
river Egypt properly so called is narrow: and the space between the
mountain- ranges which have been mentioned is plain-land, but where
it is narrowest it did not seem to me to exceed two hundred furlongs
from the Arabian mountains to those which are called the Libyan. After
this again Egypt is broad. Such is the nature of this land: and from
Heliopolis to Thebes is a voyage up the river of nine days, and the
distance of the journey in furlongs is four thousand eight hundred and
sixty, the number of /schoines/ being eighty-one. If these measures of
Egypt in furlongs be put together, the result is as follows:--I have
already before this shown that the distance along the sea amounts to
three thousand six hundred furlongs, and I will now declare what the
distance is inland from the sea to Thebes, namely six thousand one
hundred and twenty furlongs: and again the distance from Thebes to the
city called Elephantine is one thousand eight hundred furlongs.
Of this land then, concerning which I have spoken, it seemed to myself
also, according as the priests said, that the greater part had been won as
an addition by the Egyptians; for it was evident to me that the space
between the aforesaid mountain-ranges, which lie above the city of
Memphis, once was a gulf of the sea, like the regions about Ilion and
Teuthrania and Ephesos and the plain of the Maiander, if it be
permitted to compare small things with great; and small these are in
comparison, for of the rivers which heaped up the soil in those regions
none is worthy to be compared in volume with a single one of the
mouths of the Nile, which has five mouths. Moreover there are other
rivers also, not in size at all equal to the Nile, which have performed
great feats; of which I can mention the names of several, and especially
the Acheloos, which flowing through Acarnania and so issuing out into
the sea has already made half of the Echinades from islands into
mainland. Now there is in the land of Arabia, not far from Egypt, a gulf
of the sea running in from that which is called the Erythraian Sea, very
long and narrow, as I am about to tell. With respect to the length of the
voyage along it, one who set out from the innermost point to sail out
through it into the open sea, would spend forty days upon the voyage,
using oars; and with respect to breadth, where the gulf is broadest it is
half a day's sail across: and there is in it an ebb and flow of tide every
day. Just such another gulf I suppose that Egypt was, and that the one
ran in towards Ethiopia from the Northern Sea, and the other, the
Arabian, of which I am about to speak, tended from the South towards
Syria, the gulfs boring in so as almost to meet at their extreme points,
and passing by one another with but a small space left between. If then
the stream of the Nile should turn aside into this Arabian gulf, what
would hinder that gulf from being filled up with silt as the river
continued to flow, at all events within a period of
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