Let These Matters Then Be As They Are And As They Were At The First:
But As To The Sources
Of the Nile, not one either of the Egyptians or
of the Libyans or of the Hellenes, who came to
Speech with me,
professed to know anything, except the scribe of the sacred treasury
of Athene at the city of Sais in Egypt. To me however this man seemed
not to be speaking seriously when he said that he had certain
knowledge of it; and he said as follows, namely that there were two
mountains of which the tops ran up to a sharp point, situated between
the city of Syene, which is in the district of Thebes, and
Elephantine, and the names of the mountains were, of the one Crophi
and of the other Mophi. From the middle between these mountains flowed
(he said) the sources of the Nile, which were fathomless in depth, and
half of the water flowed to Egypt and towards the North Wind, the
other half to Ethiopia and the South Wind. As for the fathomless depth
of the source, he said that Psammetichos king of Egypt came to a trial
of this matter; for he had a rope twisted of many thousand fathoms and
let it down in this place, and it found no bottom. By this the scribe
(if this which he told was really as he said) gave me to understand
that there were certain strong eddies there and a backward flow, and
that since the water dashed against the mountains, therefore the
sounding-line could not come to any bottom when it was let down. From
no other person was I able to learn anything about this matter; but
for the rest I learnt so much as here follows by the most diligent
inquiry; for I went myself as an eye-witness as far as the city of
Elephantine and from that point onwards I gathered knowledge by
report. From the city of Elephantine as one goes up the river there is
country which slopes steeply; so that here one must attach ropes to
the vessel on both sides, as one fastens an ox, and so make one's way
onward; and if the rope break, the vessel is gone at once, carried
away by the violence of the stream. Through this country it is a
voyage of about four days in length, and in this part the Nile is
winding like the river Maiander, and the distance amounts to twelve
/schoines/, which one must traverse in this manner. Then you will come
to a level plain, in which the Nile flows round an island named
Tachompso. (Now in the regions above the Elephantine there dwell
Ethiopians at once succeeding, who also occupy half of the island, and
Egyptians the other half.) Adjoining this island there is a great
lake, round which dwell Ethiopian nomad tribes; and when you have
sailed through this you will come to the stream of the Nile again,
which flows into this lake.
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