If I could have attempted to advise Dr Shaw, or have had an opportunity of doing it, I would have suggested to him, as one who has maintained that all Egypt is the gift of the Nile, not to say that the point of the Delta is a standing and determined boundary that cannot alter. The inconsistency is apparent, and I am of a very contrary opinion.
Babylon, or Cairo, as it is now called, is fixed by the Calish or Amnis Trajanus passing through it. Ptolemy[92] says so, and Dr Shaw says that Geeza was opposite to Cairo, or in a line east and west from it, and is the ancient Memphis.
Now, if Babylon is lat. 30°, and so is Geeza, they may be opposite to one another in a line of east and west. But if the latitude of Memphis is 29° 50´ it cannot be at Geeza, which is opposite to Babylon, but ten miles farther south, in which case it cannot be opposite to Babylon or Cairo. Again, if the point of the Delta be in lat. 30°, Babylon, or Cairo, 30°, and Geeza be 30°, then the point of the Delta cannot be ten miles from Cairo or Babylon, or ten miles from Geeza.
It is ten miles from Geeza, and ten miles from Babylon, or Cairo, and therefore the distances do not agree as Dr Shaw says they do; nor can the point of the Delta, as he says, be a permanent boundary consistently with his own figures and those of Ptolemy, but it must have been washed away, or gone 10´ northward; for Babylon, as he says, is a certain boundary fixed by the Amnis Trajanus, and, supposing the Delta had been a fixed boundary, and in lat. 30°, then the distance of fifteen miles would just have made up the space that Pliny says was between that point and Memphis, if we suppose that great city was at Metrahenny.
I shall say nothing as to his next argument in relation to the distance of Geeza from the Pyramids; because, making the same suppositions, it is just as much in favour of one as of the other.
His next argument is from [93]Herodotus, who says, that Memphis lay under the sandy mountain of Libya, and that this mountain is a stony mountain covered with sand, and is opposite to the Arabian mountain.
Now this surely cannot be called Geeza; for Geeza is under no mountain, and the Arabian mountain spoken of here is that which comes close to the shore at Turra.
Diodorus says, it was placed in the straits or narrowest part of Egypt; and this Geeza cannot be so placed, for, by Dr Shaw’s own confession, it is at least twelve miles from Geeza to the sandy mountain where the Pyramids stand on the Libyan side; and, on the Arabian side, there is no mountain but that on which the castle of Cairo stands, which chain begins there, and runs a considerable way into the desert, afterwards pointing south-west, till they come so near to the eastern shore as to leave no room but for the river at Turra; so that, if the cause is to be tried by this point only, I am very confident that Dr Shaw’s candour and love of truth would have made him give up his opinion if he had visited Turra.
The last authority I shall examine as quoted by Dr Shaw, is to me so decisive of the point in question, that, were I writing to those only who are acquainted with Egypt, and the navigation of the Nile, I would not rely upon another.
Herodotus[94] says, “At the time of the inundation, the Egyptians do not sail from Naucratis to Memphis by the common channel of the river, that is Cercasora, and the point of the Delta, but over the plain country, along the very side of the Pyramids.”