As To The Breeze, Why None Blows
From The River, My Opinion Is That From Very Hot Places It Is Not
Natural That Anything Should Blow, And That A Breeze Is Wont To Blow
From Something Cold.
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.
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