86

LANDSCAPES IN THE DELTA.

though there was a cool breeze stirring, was sunny and beautiful; and the country so richly wooded, so varied in aspect by different kinds of cultivation, so dotted with villages, and flocks, and herds, and flights of white ibises, that it might well be called picturesque. Our road constantly lay within a short distance of the Nile, and sometimes close along its edge, where there was just room enough to pass between the water and those high banks of earth, or jungly thickets, which, in many places, border the stream. The river, in this part of its course, is much broader than at Rosetta, and here and there its channel is divided by small fairy islands, thickly covered with wood. Numerous boats with large triangular sails, and manned with Arabs or Nubians, were sailing rapidly along the shore; some stemming, others taking advantage of the current. The villages are extremely thick in this part of the Delta; and though, in reality, poor and ruinous, their mosques, cupolas, minarets, and white tombs, seen from afar through openings in the forests by which they are surrounded, have an air of importance and grandeur which serves to delight the eye. But it is not in the villages only that we meet with the tombs of saints. They frequently, in all parts of Egypt, stand in solitary places, and have usually a fountain and small grove adjoining, where the wandering dervish pauses to pray, and the less pious traveller to quench his thirst, or enjoy the cool shade. These buildings generally consist of a large square apartment, surmounted by a dome, in many cases handsomely fluted; and some pious or gloomy

man commonly devotes himself to the service of the sheikh, and resides in the tomb, where we always find a mat, a water jar, and a small chest to receive the donations of the passer by.

XLVI. In the course of the afternoon we passed through Ed Desoog, or Deir Ibrahim, a large village, possessing a celebrated mosque, to which, according to Denon, upwards of 200,000 individuals resort twice a year in pilgrimage. But on this point the French traveller appears to have been ill informed; at all events, I could obtain nothing from the Arabs to corroborate his account. Ed Desoog occupies the site of the ancient Naucratis, to which city the Greeks, in their commerce with ancient Egypt, were compelled to resort, the other parts of the kingdom being closed against them. It stood on the eastern bank of the Bolbitinic or Rosetta branch of the Nile, and was the birthplace of the sophist Athenæus. From this village we proceeded to Sa el Hajjar, or, "Sa of the Stones," near which is supposed to have stood SAIS, once the capital of Lower Egypt. Long before we reached the place, vast mounds of rubbish were seen rising behind the village, and close to the road was a small rocky eminence, in the face of which were two or three low openings, like the entrance to so many caverns. Trusting to the assurances which were given us, that no antiquities whatever existed in the place, we made no stay at Sa el Hajjar; but, although there seems to be no reason to doubt the accuracy of these assertions, I still regret

that I did not devote at least one day to the city of Neith, where stood of old the mysterious statue of Nature, with the inscription, "I AM ALL THAT

HAS BEEN, IS, OR SHALL BE; AND NO MORTAL

HATH EVER DRAWN ASIDE MY VEIL.' Apries, who was conquered at Momemphis by Amasis, had here a magnificent palace; and his successor, not to be outdone by him in taste or splendour, is said to have constructed in this city propylæa so vast, and built with stones of so prodigious a magnitude*, that they surpassed in grandeur every thing of the kind which had been before seen. But with Herodotus such expressions are not uncommon: he makes use of much the same phrases in speaking of the Labyrinth †, which the colleagues of Psammetichus erected in the Arsinoïtic Nome; and modern travellers, fond of dealing in the marvellous, repeat the hackneyed tale one after another.

XLVII. Another story, still more hackneyed, is, that Athens was founded by a colony from Sais. In the absence of all historical evidence of the slightest value, it is extraordinary that so improbable a fiction should have been credited by the learned. Colonies, in all other cases, have been found to resemble, in some characteristic features, the nations from which they have gone forth but in what did the people of Athens bear any likeness to the Egyptians? Did they speak the same language? Did they make use

Euterpe, c. 175

+ Idem, c. 148.

of hieroglyphics? Did they preserve the Egyptian form of government? Did they worship the same gods? On the contrary, it is clear, from the physical type of the two nations, that they did not even belong to the same family of mankind. Besides, the authors who represent Egypt as the mother of so many colonies, inform us, at the same time, that its ancient inhabitants entertained the most rooted aversion to navigation, and had no ships. How, then, could she send forth colonies beyond sea? The most that can be said for this fanciful hypothesis is, that, perhaps, some fugitive chieftain from the Delta, which was the principal residence of the military caste, having offended his sovereign, may have escaped with a few followers in a Phoenician vessel bound for Greece, and been received by the humane Athenians, whose city was in remote ages, what England is now, the refuge for the wretched and oppressed of all other countries. If the exile brought with him the knowledge of any useful art with which the Athenians were unacquainted, that ingenious and grateful people would no doubt reward him with distinction and honours, and, perhaps, raise him to the supreme power. But, admitting this to have been the case, we can no more term the ancient Athenians an Egyptian colony, than we can assert the modern Greeks to be an offshoot from Bavaria, because, in obedience to the wishes of Europe, they have received a king from that country. On the other hand, it is certain that several cities in Lower Egypt were founded by the Greeks: Canopus, Metelis, Nau

*

cratis. Why, then, may we not suppose that Sais also was a Greek city? The Neith, or Minerva, worshipped here, was originally unknown throughout the rest of Egypt: the olive, the peculiar production of Attica, was cultivated with great care in the Saïtic Nome; coins, with the head of Minerva on one side and an owl on the other, are said to have been found among its ruins‡; and Van Egmont and Clarke, men not unacquainted with ancient learning, were led by a train of reasoning, not, perhaps, unlike the above, to conclude that Sais was founded by an Athenian colony. But of this question more in another place. From Sa el Hajjar we proceeded to El Kodabé, where we were furnished by the Sheïkh el Beled, or "village chief," with a room for ourselves, and a court and provender for our beasts. The Arabs always slept in the open air beside their asses.

Monday, Nov. 26. Tookh el Nassera. XLVIII. Set out about the usual hour in the morning, and having crossed the canal of El Feresak, and passed through the village of Beir, a large striking-looking place, arrived about noon at Kafr

* Diodorus Siculus attributes the founding of Sais to the Athenians, 1. v. c. 3.; and Plato, in Timæo, says that Athens was more ancient than Sais by a thousand years.

Jablonski, Pantheon Ægyptiorum, i. 52. 58. 60.

The effigies of the Egyptian Neith, as it is found upon existing monuments, in no respects resembles that of the Athenian Pallas, and could not possibly be confounded with it. Dr. Richardson, therefore, who speaks of these coins, must mean the Grecian A0ŋŋ; and, indeed, no one, I believe, ever heard of such coins among the Egyptians.