, in which the state ceremonies
were performed, had risen in beauty and importance by the repeated
additions of the later kings, who had fixed the seat of government in
Lower Egypt, yet the Sun, or Amon-Ra, or Kneph-Ra, the god of Thebes, or
Jupiter-Amnion, as he was called by the Greeks, was the god under whose
spreading wings Egypt had seen its proudest days. Every Egyptian king
had called himself "the son of the Sun;" those who had reigned at Thebes
had boasted that they were "beloved by Amon-Ra;" and when Alexander
ordered the ancient titles to be used towards himself, he wished to lay
his offerings in the temple of this god, and to be acknowledged by the
priests as his son. As a reader of Homer, and the pupil of Aristotle,
he must have wished to see the wonders of "Egyptian Thebes," the proper
place for this ceremony; and it could only have been because, as a
general, he had not time for a march of five hundred miles, that he
chose the nearer and less known temple of Kneph-Ra, in the oasis of
Ammon, one hundred and eighty miles from the coast.

Accordingly, he floated down the river from Memphis to the sea,
taking with him the light-armed troops and the royal band of
knights-companions. When he reached Canopus, he sailed westward along
the coast, and landed at Rhacotis, a small village on the spot where
Alexandria now stands. Here he made no stay; but, as he passed through
it, he must have seen at a glance, for he was never there a second time,
that the place was formed by nature to be a great harbour, and that with
a little help from art it would be the port of all Egypt. The mouths of
the Nile were too shallow for the ever increasing size of the merchant
vessels which were then being built; and the engineers found the deeper
water which was wanted, between the village of Rhacotis and the little
island of pharos. It was all that he had seen and admired at Tyre, but
it was on a larger scale and with deeper water. It was the very spot
that he was in search of; in every way suitable for the Greek colony
which he proposed to found as the best means of keeping Egypt in
obedience. Even before the time of Homer, the island of Pharos had
given shelter to the Greek traders on that coast. He gave his orders
to Hinocrates the architect to improve the harbour, and to lay down
the plan of his new city; and the success of the undertaking proved
the wisdom both of the statesman and of the builder, for the city of
Alexandria subs