Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/328

 312 HISTORY OF GREECE. and the river from all other rivers, but Egyptian laws and cus- toms are opposed on almost all points to those of other men. " J The delta was at that time full of large and populous cities, 2 built on artificial elevations of ground, and seemingly not much inferior to Memphis itself, which was situated on the left bank of the Nile (opposite to the site of the modern Cairo), a little higher up than the spot where the delta begins. From the time when the Greeks first became cognizant of Egypt, to the build- ing of Alexandria and the reign of the Ptolemies, Memphis was the first city in Egypt, but it seems not to have been always so, there had been an earlier period when Thebes was the seat of Egyptian power, and upper Egypt of far more consequence than middle Egypt. Vicinity to the delta, which must always have contained the largest number of cities and the widest surface of productive territory, probably enabled Memphis to usurp this honor from Thebes, and the predominance of lower Egypt was etill farther confirmed when Psammetichus introduced Ionian and Karian troops as his auxiliaries in the government of the country. But the stupendous magnitude of the temples and palaces, the profusion of ornamental sculpture and painting, the immeasurable range of sculptures hewn in the rocks still remaining as attesta- tions of the grandeur of Thebes, not to mention Ombi, Edfu, and Elephantine, show that upper Egypt was once the place to which the land-tax from the productive delta was paid, and where the kings and priests who employed it resided. It has been even contended that Thebes itself was originally settled by emigrants from still higher regions of the river, and the remains yet 1 Herodot. ii, 35. AiyvTrrioi apa T& oiipavu TU KOTO, aipeae iovn iTepoip, KOI 7<p noTuft^ (pvaiv u^oitjv 7rapexo[iV(f) jj ol u/U.O nora/iot, ru 7roP,A<i TTUVTO IfnraXiv Tolat. ahhoiai uv&puTroiai karfjaavTO fi&Ea Kal vopovc. 2 Theokritus (Idyll, xvii, 83) celebrates Ptolemy Philadelphia king of Egypt as ruling over thirty-three thousand three hundred and thirty-three cities : the manner in which he strings these figures into three hexameter verses is somewhat ingenious. The priests, in describing to Herodotus the unrivalled prosperity which they affirmed Egypt to have enjoyed under Amasis, the last king before the Persian conquest, said that there were then twenty thousand cities in the country (ii, 177). Diodorus tells us that eighteen thousand different cities and considerable villages were registered in the Egyptian avaypaQal (i, 31) for the ancient times, but that thirty '.houaand were numbered under the Ptolemies.