But in one point the Greek historian has made a serious mistake. It was not between Assuan and Elephantinê that the sources of the Nile were placed, but between Bigeh and the mainland, on the other side of the Cataract. Between Assuan and Elephantinê there are no “mountains,” only the channel of the river. In saying therefore that Krôphi and Môphi were mountains and that they rose between Syênê and Elephantinê, Herodotos proves beyond all possibility of doubt that he had never been at the spot. Had [pg 202] he actually visited Assuan the words of the sacred scribe would have been reported more correctly.
At Elephantinê honours were paid to “the great” god of the Nile, who rose from his caverns in the neighbourhood. Of this we have been assured by a mutilated Greek inscription on a large slab of granite which was discovered by English sappers at Assuan in 1885. It records the endowments and privileges which were granted to the priests of Elephantinê by the earlier Ptolemies, and one line of it refers to the places “wherein is the fountain of the Nile.” But long before the days of the Ptolemies and of Greek visitors to Egypt, when the First Cataract was the boundary of Egyptian rule and knowledge, the fountain of the Nile was already placed immediately beyond it. This infantile belief of Egyptian mythology was preserved, like so much else of prehistoric antiquity, in the mythology of later days. In the temple of Redesîyeh, on the road from Edfu to Berenikê, an inscription relates how Seti i. dug a well in the desert and how the water gushed up, “as from the depth of the two Qerti of Elephantinê.” Here the bottomless springs are transferred from Bigeh to Elephantinê, thus explaining how Herodotos could have been led into his error of supposing them to be two mountains between Elephantinê and Assuan. Doubtless the sacred scribe had marked the position [pg 203] of the island of Bigeh by its relation to the better known island of Elephantinê.
The very name of the city which stood on the southern extremity of Elephantinê implied that here, in the days of its foundation, was placed the source of the Egyptian Nile. It was called Qebhu, the city of “fresh water,” a word represented by the picture of a vase from which water is flowing. At times the city was also called Abu, but Abu was more correctly the name of the island on which it stood. Abu, in fact, signified the island “of elephants,” of which the Greek Elephantinê was but a translation. In that early age, when it first became known to the Egyptians, the African elephant must still have existed there.
Herodotos does not seem to have been aware that Elephantinê was an island as well as a city. Except where he is reporting the words of the sacred scribe, he always speaks of it as “a city,” sometimes to the exclusion of the more important Syênê. It is another sign that his voyage up the Nile did not extend so far.
We need not point out other instances of his ignorance of the country above the Fayyûm. Those which have been already quoted are enough. The summer months which he spent in Egypt were more than fully employed in visiting the wonders of [pg 204] Memphis and the chief cities of the Delta, and in exploring the Fayyûm. Upper Egypt was closed to him, as it was to the rest of his countrymen for many a long day.
But we are now able to trace his journey with some degree of exactness. He must have arrived about the beginning of July at the mouth of the Kanôpic arm of the Nile—the usual destination of Greek ships—and thus have made his way by Hermopolis or Damanhur to the Greek capital Naukratis. There he doubtless hired his Karian dragoman, with whom he sailed away over the inundated land to Sais. But his expedition to Sais was only an excursion, from which he returned to continue his voyage in a direct line past Prosôpitis and the pyramids of Gizeh to Memphis. There he inspected the great temple of Ptah, whom his countrymen identified with their Hephæstos, and from thence he went by water to see the pyramids. It was while he was at Memphis, moreover, that he paid a visit to Heliopolis, with its university and its temple, of which all that is left to-day is the obelisk of Usertesen. Next he made his voyage up the Nile, past the brick pyramids of Dahshûr, to Anysis or Herakleopolis, and from thence to the Fayyûm. Then he returned to Memphis, and then again passing Heliopolis sailed northward to Bubastis and Buto. It was now [pg 205] probably that he made excursions to Paprêmis and Busiris, though our ignorance of the precise situation of these places unfortunately prevents us from being certain of the fact. Eventually he found himself at Daphnæ, on the Pelusiac branch of the Nile. This brought him to Pelusium, where he took ship for Tyre.
Chapter VII. In The Steps Of Herodotos.
Let us follow Herodotos in his Egyptian journey and meet him where he landed at the Kanôpic mouth of the Nile. The place had been known to Greek sailors in days of which tradition alone had preserved a memory. It was here that pirates and traders had raided the fields of the fellahin or exchanged slaves and Ægean vases for the precious wares of Egypt in the age when Achæan princes ruled at Mykenæ and Tiryns. Guided by the island of Pharos, they had made their way a few miles eastward to the mouth of the great river which is called Aigyptos in the Odyssey.