e Hellenes come in ships is a land which has been
won by the Egyptians as an addition, and that it is a gift of the river:
moreover the regions which lie above this lake also for a distance of
three days' sail, about which they did not go on to say anything of
this kind, are nevertheless another instance of the same thing: for the
nature of the land of Egypt is as follows:--First when you are still
approaching it in a ship and are distant a day's run from the land, if
you let down a sounding-line you will bring up mud and you will find
yourself in eleven fathoms. This then so far shows that there is a
silting forward of the land. Then secondly, as to Egypt itself, the
extent of it along the sea is sixty _schoines_, according to our
definition of Egypt as extending from the Gulf of Plinthine to the
Serbonian lake, along which stretches Mount Casion; from this lake then
the sixty _schoines_ are reckoned: for those of men who are poor in
land have their country measured by fathoms, those who are less poor by
furlongs, those who have much land by parasangs, and those who have
land in very great abundance by _schoines_: now the parasang is equal
to thirty furlongs, and each _schoine_, which is an Egyptian measure, is
equal to sixty furlongs. So there would be an extent of three thousand
six hundred furlongs for the coast-land of Egypt. From thence and as
far as Heliopolis inland Egypt is broad, and the land is all flat and
without springs of water and formed of mud: and the road as one goes
inland from the sea to Heliopolis is about the same in length as that
which leads from the altar of the twelve gods at Athens to Pisa and the
temple of Olympian Zeus: reckoning up you would find the difference
very small by which these roads fail of being equal in length, not more
indeed than fifteen furlongs; for the road from Athens to Pisa wants
fifteen furlongs of being fifteen hundred, while the road to Heliopolis
from the sea reaches that number completely. From Heliopolis however,
as you go up, Egypt is narrow; for on the one side a mountain-range
belonging to Arabia stretches along by the side of it, going in a
direction from the North towards the midday and the South Wind, tending
upwards without a break to that which is called the Erythraian Sea, in
which range are the stone-quarries which were used in cutting stone for
the pyramids at Memphis. On this side then the mountain ends where I
have said, and then takes a turn back; and