Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/200

96 them perfectly, they brought me fresh water and some sugar-canes, which they split and steeped in it. If they were satisfied, I was very much so. They told me of a large scene of ruins that was about four miles distant, and offered to send a person to conduct me, but I did not accept their offer, as I was to pass there next day.

21st, in the morning, we came to Gawa, where is the second scene of ruins of Egyptian architecture, after leaving Cairo. I immediately went on shore, and found a small temple of three columns in front, with the capitals entire, and the columns in several separate pieces. They seemed by that, and their slight proportions, to be of the most modern of that species of building; but the whole were covered with hieroglyphics, the old story over again, the hawk and the serpent, the man sitting with the dog's head, with the perch, or measuring-rod; in one hand, the hemisphere and globes with wings, and leaves of the banana-tree, as is supposed, in his other. The temple is filled with rubbish and dung of cattle, which the Arabs bring in here to shelter them from the heat.

says, that these are the remains of the ancient Diospolis Parva, but, though very loth to differ from him, and without the least desire of criticising, I cannot here be of his opinion. For Ptolemy, I think, makes Diospolis Parva about lat. 26° 40′, and Gawa is 27° 20′, which is by much too great a difference. Besides, Diospolis and its nome were far to the southward of Panopolis; but we shall shew, by undoubted evidence, that Gawa is to the northward.