where it is widest, as I was
informed, it is a journey of two months across from East to West;
and the borders of it which turn towards the East are said to produce
frankincense. 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. 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 Acheloos,
which flowing through Acarnania and so issuing out into the sea ha