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.

9. 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 the
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.

10. 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. 15 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
Achelooes, which flowing through Acarnania and so issuing out into the
sea has already made half of the Echinades from islands into mainland.

11. 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; 16 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 wh