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.
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