Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/168

64 is certainly true; the foregoing dispute is a sufficient evidence of this.

I will not suffer it to be said, that, soon after the building of Alexandria, or in the time of the Ptolemies, this was the case, because Strabo says, that when he was in Egypt, Memphis, next to Alexandria, was the most magnificent city in Egypt.

was called the Capital of Egypt, and there was entire a temple of Osiris; the Apis (or sacred ox) was kept and worshipped there. There was likewise an apartment for the mother of that ox still standing, a temple of Vulcan of great magnificence, a large circus, or space for fighting bulls; and a great colossus in the front of the city thrown down: there was also a temple of Venus, and a serapium, in a very sandy place, where the wind heaps up hills of moving sand very dangerous to travellers, and a number of sphinxes, (of some only their heads being visible) the others covered up to the middle of their body.

the front of the city were a number of palaces then in ruins, and likewise lakes. These buildings, he says, stood formerly upon an eminence; they lay along the side of the hill, stretching down to the lakes and the groves, and forty stadia from the city; there was a mountainous height, that had many Pyramids standing upon it, the sepulchres of the kings, among which there are three remarkable, and two the wonders of the world.