They Make One
Steering-Oar For It, Which Is Passed Through The Bottom Of The Boat;
And They Have A Mast Of Acacia And Sails Of Papyrus.
These boats
cannot sail up the river unless there be a very fresh wind blowing,
but are towed from the shore:
Down-stream however they travel as
follows: - they have a door-shaped crate made of tamarisk wood and reed
mats sewn together, and also a stone of about two talents weight bored
with a hole; and of these the boatman lets the crate float on in front
of the boat, fastened with a rope, and the stone drags behind by
another rope. The crate then, as the force of the stream presses upon
it, goes on swiftly and draws on the /baris/ (for so these boats are
called), while the stone dragging after it behind and sunk deep in the
water keeps its course straight. These boats they have in great
numbers and some of them carry many thousands of talents' burden.
When the Nile comes over the land, the cities alone are seen rising
above the water, resembling more nearly than anything else the islands
in the Egean Sea; for the rest of Egypt becomes a sea and the cities
alone rise above water. Accordingly, whenever this happens, they pass
by water not now by the channels of the river but over the midst of
the plain: for example, as one sails up from Naucratis to Memphis the
passage is then close by the pyramids, whereas the usual passage is
not the same even here, but goes by the point of the Delta and the
city of Kercasoros; while if you sail over the plain to Naucratis from
the sea and from Canobos, you will go by Anthylla and the city called
after Archander. Of these Anthylla is a city of note and is especially
assigned to the wife of him who reigns over Egypt, to supply her with
sandals, (this is the case since the time when Egypt came to be under
the Persians): the other city seems to me to have its name from
Archander the son-in-law of Danaos, who was the son of Phthios, the
son of Achaios; for it is called the City of Archander. There might
indeed by another Archander, but in any case the name is not Egyptian.
Hitherto my own observation and judgment and inquiry are the vouchers
for that which I have said; but from this point onwards I am about to
tell the history of Egypt according to that which I have heard, to
which will be added also something of that which I have myself seen.
Of Min, who first became king of Egypt, the priests said that on the
one hand he banked off the site of Memphis from the river: for the
whole stream of the river used to flow along by the sandy mountain-
range on the side of Libya, but Min formed by embankments that bend of
the river which lies to the South about a hundred furlongs above
Memphis, and thus he dried up the old stream and conducted the river
so that it flowed in the middle between the mountains:
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