It Is Certain
However That Now They Gather In Fruit From The Earth With Less Labour
Than Any Other Men
And also with less than the other Egyptians; for
they have no labour in breaking up furrows with a plough
Nor in hoeing
nor in any other of those labours which other men have about a crop;
but when the river has come up of itself and watered their fields and
after watering has left them again, then each man sows his own field
and turns into it swine, and when he has trodden the seed into the
ground by means of the swine, after that he waits for the harvest, and
when he has threshed the corn by means of the swine, then he gathers
it in.
If we desire to follow the opinions of the Ionians as regards Egypt,
who say that the Delta alone is Egypt, reckoning its sea-coast to be
from the watch-tower called of Perseus to the fish-curing houses of
Pelusion, a distance of forty /schoines/, and counting it to extend
inland as far as the city of Kercasoros, where the Nile divides and
runs to Pelusion and Canobos, while as for the rest of Egypt, they
assign it partly to Libya and partly to Arabia, - if, I say, we should
follow this account, we should thereby declare that in former times
the Egyptians had no land to live in; for, as we have seen, their
Delta at any rate is alluvial, and has appeared (so to speak) lately,
as the Egyptians themselves say and as my opinion is.
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