ctionaries, and
still remaining at the present day.

The town occupied only the smaller half of a long narrow island, which
was composed of detached masses of granite, formed gradually into a
compact whole by accumulations of sand, and over which the Nile, from
time immemorial, had deposited a thick coating of its mud. It is now
shaded by acacias, mulberry trees, date trees, and dom palms, growing in
some places in lines along the pathways, in others distributed in groups
among the fields. Half a dozen saqiyehs, ranged in a line along the
river-bank, raise water day and night, with scarcely any cessation of
their monotonous creaking. The inhabitants do not allow a foot of their
narrow domain to lie idle; they have cultivated wherever it is possible
small plots of durra and barley, bersim and beds of vegetables.

[Illustration: 266.jpg THE ISLAND OF ELAPHANTINE SEEN FROM THE RUINS OF
SYENNE]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato. In the
foreground are the ruins of the Roman mole built of brick,
which protected the entrance to the harbour of Syene; in the
distance is the Libyan range, surmounted by the ruins of
several mosques and of a Coptic monastery. Cf. the woodcut
on p. 275 of the present work.

A few scattered buffaloes and cows graze in corners, while fowls and
pigeons without number roam about in flocks on the look-out for what
they can pick up. It is a world in miniature, tranquil and pleasant,
where life is passed without effort, in a perpetually clear atmosphere
and in the shade of trees which never lose their leaf. The ancient city
was crowded into the southern extremity, on a high plateau of granite
beyond the reach of inundations. Its ruins, occupying a space half a
mile in circumference, are heaped around a shattered temple of Khnurnu,
of which the most ancient parts do not date back beyond the sixteenth
century before our era.

[Illustration: 267.jpg THE FIRST CATARACT]

Map by Thuillier, from _La Description de l'Egypte, Ant_.,
vol. i. pl. 30, 1. I have added the ancient names in those
cases where it has been possible to identify them with the
modern localities.

It was surrounded with walls, and a fortress of sun-dried brick perched
upon a neighbouring island to the south-west, gave it complete com-mand
over the passages of the cataract. An arm of the river ninety yards wide
separated it from Suanit, whose closely built habitations w