Page:Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians Volume 1.djvu/55

Rh CHAP. I. PHAROS OF HOMER. ,

much less then can we suppose Ethiopia to have been ah'eady inhabited by the ancestors of the future colonisers of Egypt, while that part of the valley lying below the cataracts of Syene was un- dergoing its formation ?

Much consequence has been attached to an expression of Homer, that '* the distance from the Isle of Pharos to AiyuTrrog was as much as a vessel with a fair wind could perform in one day ; " and this is constantly adduced as a decisive proof of the great accumulation of alluvial soil in the Delta*, and of its rapid advances into the Mediterranean, since the era of the Trojan war. But a very im- perfect acquaintance with the situation of the Isle of Pharos, and the nature of the ground on which Alexandria is built, ought to have prevented so erroneous a conclusion ; and if we readily account for the misconstruction of the AiyuTrrou Tr^ovrapoiSsf of the poet, we are surprised at the notion which extends the river and its alluvial deposit over the space between the Canopic mouth and the Pharos, hitherto unwashed by the fertilising waters of the rising Nile. And if a certain deposit does take place in the harbouo' of Alexandria, it is very trifling, and by no means capable of having united Pharos to the shore, which was done artificially by means of the Heptastadium, whose increased breadth, owing to many subsequent additions, now forms the base of the chief part of the modern city. Ancient


 * Plutarch tie Iside. s.40.

f Odyss. A. 355. By the harbour and fresh water at the I. of Pharos, Homer evidently alludes to the site of the modern Alexandria, close to the island.

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