VIII. ARABIA Is the name given in ancient and modern times to a vast peninsula lying between the parallels of 12° and 34° N. Lat., and 32° and 60° E. Long. It contains about 1,000,000 of square miles, covering an extent of the earth's surface equal to Great Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Germany united. By far the greater part of this space is an arid irredeemable waste of sandy desert. Some portions of the sea-bord and a few Oases on the Sinus Arabicus and Mare Erythraeum produced in considerable abundance balsam, aloes, myrrh, casia, frankincense, and other odoriferous substances, which were in request among the luxurious population of Imperial Rome. Hence prevailed exaggerated notions of the wealth of a country, which, while it provided such superfluities, was destitute of the means of comfortable subsistence. To these productions, then, may be traced the allusions to Arabia as a sort of earthly paradise; and hence the very inappropriate application of the epithet FELIX to one of the poorest and most wretched countries on the face of the globe.1 1 The following quotations may be taken as examples of the omne ignotum pro magnifico : Without dwelling longer, therefore, on this terra parum cognita, we return to the sea-coast; and taking care, as we proceed southward, to keep on our right hand, and so steer clear of, 'that Sirbonian bog, Where armies whole have sunk,' we reach at last the eastern branch of NILUS, the NILE, the river, and the only river of AEGYPTUS. Quid censes munera terrae ? Quid maris extremos Arabas ditantis et Indos? Urantur pia tura focis, urantur odores, HOR. EPIST. I. 66. Quos tener e terra divite mittit Arabs.-TIBUL. II. 2. 3. Icci, beatis nunc Arabum invides Gazis, et acrem militiam paras Non ante devictis Sabæae Regibus.-HOR. CARM. I. 29. 1. Plenas aut Arabum domos.—IB. II. 12. 24. Intactis opulentior Thesauris Arabum et divitis Indiae.-IB. III. 24. 1. nec Otia divitiis Arabum liberrima muto.-IB. EPIST. I. 7. 35. - gentle gales, Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole Of Araby the Blest; with such delay Well pleas'd they slack their course, and many a league MILT. PAR. LOost, iv. 156. There is poetical truth at least in the last passage quoted, for the south-east coast which Milton speaks of, where the tribe Sabaci lived, is that which chiefly abounds in sweet-smelling gums and spices. IX. AEGYPTUS. EGYPT is the north-east portion of the great peninsular continent of AFRICA, situated between the Tropic of Cancer (23° 30′) and 31° 30′ N. Latitude, and between 30° and 35° E. Longitude. There is perhaps no part of the world out of Italy and Greece, to which allusion is more frequently made by the poets and orators of antiquity than to Egypt; but no ancient writer who is not a professed geographer goes much into detail, or mentions more than one or two of its towns and localities. The singular nature of the country, the immemorial existence of the Pyramids, the dim tradition of a very remote antiquity, the absence of rain, the mighty cataracts and periodical inundations of the river, and above all, the unexplored, and as the ancients thought, inexplorable fountain-head of the Nile which the river-god studiously concealed from mortals,-all combined to throw a charm of sublimity and interest over the whole, which captivated the imagination both of the poet and his readers. Hence the frequent question, so strikingly put by Tibullus when he asks,— 'NILE PATER, quânam possum te dicere causâ, Aut quibus in terris, occuluisse caput ?'-1. 8. 23. But the sculptural and architectural remains of un certain date, which modern research has brought to light at Luxor and Carnac, in the island Philae, and elsewhere, do not seem to have been duly appreciated by, or even generally known to, the ancients. Of the Towns so thickly planted on the banks of the Nile, none have a claim to be enumerated here, with the exception of the following: 1. Syene (Assouan), a town so nearly under the tropic, that Lucan was justified in saying (11. 587), 'umbras nusquam flectente Syene,' meaning thereby, that at the summer solstice, when the sun is on the meridian, the shadow is not projected northward, as it is in all higher latitudes: 2. Thebae (Niloticae), which must be regarded as one of the largest and most ancient of cities, seeing it is described by Homer as having a hundred gates (Éxatoμñuλo!) and capable of sending forth from each of them 200 men-at-arms with chariots and horses of all which and of the city itself not a vestige remained in Juvenal's time,- Atque vetus Thebe centum jacet obruta portis.'-(xv. 16): 3. Memphis, on the left bank of the Nile, with the Pyramids in its immediate neighbourhood. The town is called by Strabo το βασίλειον Αιγυπτίων : and, in Latin, Memphitica Tellus is used as a poetical synonym for Aegyptus. Fifteen miles farther down, the Nile separated into different channels, by all of which its waters found their way to the Of these channels the ancients enumerated the most noted are the two extreme ones, sea. seven 1 Herodotus reports the number to have been 20,000 (dioμvgias) in the prosperous reign of Amasis. B. II. cap. 177. "Hence the constant allusion among the poets to 'septemflua, the Ostium Canopicum W. and Pelusiăcum E. These two diverging branches, with the sea-coast line between them, form the sides and base of the triangular space Delta, so called from its resemblance to the capital form of that letter in the Greek alphabet; and by these two channels alone the water of the Nile is now discharged. Twelve miles west from the Canopic embouchure was Alexandria, so named after Alexander the Great, who founded it on his way back from the Oasis and temple of Jupiter Ammon; a great city in ancient times, as it is now under the same name, though with the quantity of the penult syllable corrupted. To these localities may be added the two ports of Egypt on the Red Sea, Myos Hormos and Berenice; and on the Nile itself Ombi and Tentyra, which owe their notoriety to their having fallen under the lash of Juvenal, in consequence of a deadly quarrel between them on a subject, which has set people by the ears in every age of the world.3 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON AEGYPTUS.-To have a general idea of Egypt, " imagine to yourself a narrow sea, and arid rocks (the Red Sea and Ara septena, septemgemini, septemplicis, ostia Nili.' Papyrifer is also one of the epithets of the Nile, from the abundant growth on its banks of the reed papīrus, which long furnished the material for ancient writings, and still gives its name to the modern substitute. Summus utrinque 3 Inde furor vulgo, quod numina vicinorum Odit uterque locus, quum solos credat habendos Esse Deos, quos ipse colit !-Sat. xv. 35. |