Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/169

Rh is the account of an eye-witness, an historian of the first credit, who mentions Memphis, and this state of it, so late as the reign of Nero; and therefore I shall conclude this argument with three observations, which, I am very sorry to say, could never have escaped a man of Dr Shaw's learning and penetration.

1st, by this description of Strabo, who was in it, it is plain that the city was not deserted in the time of the Ptolemies.

2dly, no time, between the building of Alexandria and the time of the Ptolemies, could it be swallowed up by the river, or its situation unknown.

3dly, great part of it having been built upon an eminence on the side of a hill, especially the large and magnificent edifices I have spoken of, it could not be situated, as he says, low in the bed of the river; for, upon the giving way of the Memphitic rampart, it would be swallowed up by it.

it was swallowed up by the river, it was not Geeza; and this accident must have been since Strabo's time, which Dr Shaw will not aver; and it is by much too loose arguing to say, first, that the place was destroyed by the violent overflowing of the river, and then pretend its situation to be Geeza, where a river never came.

descent of the hill to where the Pyramids were, and the number of Pyramids that were there around it, of which three are remarkable; the very sandy situation, and the